News from the C of E: Bishop comes out

As you may know, our friends across the Pond are having a bit of a wrestle about Teh Gayz.  Although marriage equality is the law of the land, the Church of England (which is established by the State) has managed to get legislation that actually prevents them from recognizing, performing, or participating in same sex marriages, and that inoculates them against accusations of bias for this. Priests and bishops are "allowed" to be gay as long as they are celibate, and under no circumstances can they marry a same sex partner. 

There have been a few cases where priests have married, and been fired, or lost their licenses.  I understand that a letter is forthcoming where a number of gay priests will out themselves as being married.

And, in a reflection of the schism that happened here, some conservatives have started making plans for a shadow synod, a possible break away. That would suggest they know they are going to lose.

Perhaps their fear was inspired by a comment from  Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby (my emphasis)

Welby talked of an "incredible clash that is so important to so many people and goes to the heart of the identity of so many people". He added: "There isn't a simple solution... I haven't got a good answer." To applause, he said "I am constantly consumed with horror" at the way in which the Church has treated the gay community.

But the big news today,  the first C of E Bishop has outed himself, before he was outed by a journalist.

The bishop of Grantham has become the first Church of England bishop to publicly declare that he is gay and in a relationship. In a move that will be embraced by campaigners for equality but is likely to alarm conservatives who fear the church is moving away from traditional teachings, Nicholas Chamberlain said there had been no secret about his long-term – albeit celibate – relationship with his partner. ...

Chamberlain was consecrated last November, and all those involved in his appointment – including Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury – were aware of his personal situation. ...

Chamberlain said he adhered to church guidelines, under which gay clergy must be celibate and are not permitted to marry. In the appointments process, “We explored what it would mean for me as a bishop to be living within those guidelines,” he said.

The celibacy thing allows people to pretend that a gay man isn't actually gay.   But relationships are about much more than sex.  And, as  Bishop Gene Robinson has said, when this celibacy policy in the C of E was first promulgated,

I have to tell you this infuriates me and disappoints me. Let me try to say why. I don't care whether any couple, gay or straight, has sexual intimacy or not. That's not my business. That's their business. But to require someone to give up this piece of one's life, which is so central to who each of us is as a human being, just seems, it seems cruel, and it also, it bespeaks something that I think is not talked about enough around the issue of gay sexuality, which is that gay is not something you do, it's something we are.... 

I laughingly will say to a more conservative audience, you know, OK, so if it's OK to be gay but not act on it, could two men live together? Could we sleep in the same bedroom if we slept in twin beds?

Well, could we sleep in the same bed if we didn't touch each other? Well, could we touch each other as long as we only held hands? I mean, at what point, at what point is it gay? Do you know what I mean? It just doesn't make any sense. And it comes out of what I think is a very male understanding of sexuality, which is you're only being sexual when you're making love.  

But the fact of the matter is we are sexual all the time, and this bifurcation of, you know, being gay versus acting on it just seems to me ludicrous at best and cruel at worst.

Meanwhile, expect heads to start exploding in the C of E in any minute....

Canterbury kerfuffle and the collapse of the Church of England

Well, I have been watching the fall out from the debacle in Canterbury, where the primates of the Anglican Communion (the leaders of each of the individual churches in this loose federation) , plus the leader of a schismatic American group met and an effort of dubious legality was made to censure the Episcopal Church because of Teh Gayz. (There is less to this than the headlines imply, however.)  This intended to placate the strident anti-gay voices of some of the African churches that advocate criminalization of homosexuality, or at least, homosexual acts.  A three year "punishment" is presumably intended to allow General Convention to come to its senses (not gonna happen.....)

Archbishop Justin Welby of the Church of England, the symbolic leader of the Communion, wrung his hands and apologized for hurting those poor LGBT people but really it came across as an abusive parent who apologises to his child as he beats her. There was no effort to scold the African primates for their anti-gay language.  By all accounts the only person to come out of this well is TEC Presiding Bishop Michael Curry.

Here's a good summary of the whole thing.

Coincidentally, at the same time, a new survey was published about the collapse of the Church of England in the UK:

A POST-CHRISTIAN era has dawned in Britain, with most white Britons now saying they have no religion, according to a new survey. The increase is most pronounced among those aged under 40 and comes amid claims that they feel alienated from the church’s conservative social values.

There's a tendency here in the US to think of the C of E as a fellow traveller, but although many British Anglicans are very gay-friendly, the C of E institutionally is not.  The bishops argued in the House of Lords to prevent legalization of same sex marriage last year, and when that was inevitable, they put in place multiple legislative bits that actually prevent the C of E from marrying gay people (the so-called quadruple lock, which can only be undone with further parliamentary action).  And, gay priests who marry have lost their ability to officiate.

Andrew Brown (who has a new book coming out, That Was The Church That Was: How the Church of England Lost the English People) surveys the collapse  in the Guardian:

But at the same time as people have been growing less religious, the Church of England has been growing more religious: more exclusive, more of a club for self-conscious believers, prouder of being out of step with the people it once served. 

Only last week, Justin Welby was boasting to the other leaders of Anglican churches that the Church of England had secured exemptions from equalities legislation – and then complaining that he operated in an “anti-Christian culture”. What does he expect, when the church he leads systematically violates the moral intuitions of most of its own natural constituency?

How can the C of E continue as an established church (with, one might add, guaranteed seats in the House of Lords), when it has lost the British people?

In any case, I prefer to focus on the exemplary leadership and grace of Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, who truly is the right face and the right voice for this time.  And of course, all these Anglican shenanigans have exactly no effect on the average Episcopalian, who is far more concerned with getting on with doing what needs doing, than with hot air blowing in Canterbury.

Bishop Gladwin gets it

St Paul's Cathedral, London, has a series from retired bishops on "What I want to say now". The first speaker was The Right Reverend John Gladwin, retired Bishop of Chelmsford. And Bp Gladwin clearly "gets it":

There is a crisis of faith. The outcome of our failing to address the medium and language through which we offer the faith of Jesus Christ today will be that people will connect orthodox Christian faith with outmoded ways of thinking and being. The impression is being given that if you are a scientist you cannot with intellectual integrity be a Christian. I suspect that feeling is especially strong among younger students. If you believe in human diversity and the fundamental equality of all human beings whatever their human experience and character you cannot be a Christian. If you are gay or lesbian and entering into a marriage partnership the church is not for you. It is no good blaming the strident voices of secular humanism and scientific atheism for this outcome. We Christians have vacated the field still wielding intellectual weapons that are distinctly rusty and decaying.

It is deeply serious that increasing numbers of people of real principle and integrity of life feel that their own integrity and conscience would be compromised if they came anywhere near the church. We are speaking here of the Church of England which has a duty to all the people of our country. The Archbishop is right. We are a Christian country. The formal relationship of the church to our society gives the church a duty, in partnership with everyone of good will towards it, to serve the people of this nation with the good news of Jesus Christ. That is the foundation on which our history has been built. A failure to understand the importance of this in relation to how we offer the faith and seek to enable the diverse and changing needs of our people to connect with the gospel opens the door for the voices of secularism to eat away at our historic culture.

Describing a TV program about a gay couple adopting children, he says, 'How can the local church be seen to be supportive and encouraging of their commitment to offer loving family life to these children if we spend our time nationally criticising such action? "  and goes on

....Our task is to risk the journey of faith following Jesus Christ as we engage with people and communities today. If we really believe that the mystery of the love and power of God is at work for the protection of the vulnerable, the defence of the humanity and rights of minorities, the care of the excluded, and the struggle for justice – as we see in the face of Jesus Christ – then that surely defines the mission and priorities of the church in any age and culture. ....

More about the series at Thinking Anglicans.

CoE Bishops start interrogating gay clergy

You will recall, church geeks, that the Church of England Bishops released a report recently (so called "pastoral guidance")  in which they unwillingly admitted that some gay people will be married, but this WILL NOT happen in church.  And while blessings might be provided, grudgingly, they should be private, preferably in a closet.  And under no circumstances should gay clergy (who are supposed to be celibate anyway, wink wink) even CONSIDER marrying their partners.  (And lets not even mention those closeted gay bishops).

Yeah, how do you think that's going to work?  There are gay clergy in the CoE and some of them are planning weddings.

And the Bishops are looking into it.

From the Church Times:

GAY clergy have this week been describing the ramifications of the pastoral guidance on same-sex marriage, issued by the House of Bishops last month. Bishops have begun meeting gay clergy, at least five of whom are reported to be planning to marry. 

The Vicar of St Mary with All Souls', Kilburn, and St James's, West Hampstead, the Revd Andrew Cain, said on Tuesday that speaking publicly about his plans to marry his partner of 14 years ( News, 21 February) had resulted in an "uncomfortable" meeting with his bishop, the Rt Revd Peter Wheatley, on Wednesday last week. 

"It was very uncomfortable for both of us," he said. "He was with HR, and I was with a union rep. That would not be normal for a meeting between a bishop and a priest. I could not honestly say it was particularly pastoral. It was awkward."

Ya think?  Wow.  Apparently the Bishop is trying to get them to change their mind.

He suggested that perhaps I would consider having a civil partnership, and I said my partner and I had deliberately not done that because we believe in marriage, and now it is possible for us to marry, we will marry."

Of course.  BP and I deliberately did not get a Domestic Partnership because, d'uh, IT'S NOT MARRIAGE.  We held out for the real thing (coming up on 6 years married, in October).

And the other feature of this is that the CoE Bishops were generally against civil unions, before they were for them.

Reminds me of that recent case in Washington where the vice principal was fired by a Catholic school for marrying his partner, and they offered him a blessing if he would just get a divorce.    You cannot make up this stuff.  

Meanwhile, back to the Church Times article:

On Monday, the Chaplain at Portsmouth University, the Revd Andy Marshall, confirmed that he plans to marry his partner of six years, despite the House of Bishops' statement.... 

Since the publication of the guidance, he has had conversations with people who have been told by their diocesan director of ordinands to sign a document stating that they are single or celibate. 

They had asked him "whether I feel they should end a relationship of several years, in order to sign the document and pursue ordination. 

"What was intended as a discussion document was used to oppress and bully people."

And really, CoE, how do you think that's going to go down in a country where same sex marriage is legal, starting next week? Not only is this greasing the skids to irrelevance, it's giving a large push towards the death of the church.  Anti-women, anti-gay, and placating a bunch of southern bishops whose countries want to imprison and punish LGBT people.

Can you spell "Disestablishment"?  Because, by George (or should that be, by Justin?), I think it's coming.

C of E Bishop recommends gay blessings are held in the closet

Well, not quite, but almost.  The Bishop of Dorking wants to tell everyone that really, they aren't anti gay.  Because a small, hidden prayer MIGHT be held for a gay couple, as long as it isn't in church and not formal, and no one knows.

Inevitably, the media have highlighted what is seen as the negative outcome rather than the many positive things which the Guidance has to say. ...a pastoral response of prayers is encouraged, where appropriate, to gay couples who may enquire about the possibility of some form of service. This would not be any fomal rite or liturgy but, as paragraph 22 of the Appendix states, a ‘more informal kind of prayer, at the request of the couple, might be appropriate in the light of circumstances’. My own view is that this might be best done in the couple’s home.

Dear Bishop:

When in a hole, STOP DIGGING.

(from Thinking Anglicans)

Heartbreaking response to CofE Bishops

From a guest blog at St Laurence's Cowley,  in which the writer responds to the recent letter of the Church of England Bishops that forbids any formal recognition or blessing of gay couples (note that this individual refers to ze's beloved partner as BP as well....)

In withholding the possibility of a blessing ceremony in our own consecrated places of worship, overseen by our own priest and in the presence of our Christian brothers and sisters, the Anglican Communion, The Catholic Church and others, are essentially cursing us in the name of God.

This sounds very harsh and I am quite certain that many will vehemently challenge my understanding of the situation. But, from our perspective everything that is denied expression in the Light of Christ is forced outside that Light and into the darkness. Above all BP and I want to walk in the Light. Consequently we are very unlikely to take up the opportunity for civil marriage but would leap at the chance of a blessing in our own church.

We are not young and anyway due to health issues we have had to recognise that this year is the time to take out the 'bucket list' and get on with it. If only it could include with reasonable expectation of achievement, the blessing of our special and precious relationship in the presence of God.

Pastoral, Bishops?  Really?

The anguish is heartbreaking.

Oops, they did it again: Tone Deaf CofE Bishops refuse recognition of same sex marriages

Those of us who are church geeks (and I am one, even though I'm not a believer -- life's funny like that) are commenting with horror on Facebook about the latest example of tone-deaf stupidity from the Bishops of the Church of England.

To catch up on  where we've been, the UK legalized same sex civil unions a number of years ago, and then this year approved of same sex civil marriages.  The Church of England opposed both of these, with some vigor, and as the established church in the UK, made sure that it will never be required to formalize same sex marriages.

This goes on in a context where the CofE has grudgingly acknowledged that there are gay clerics but insists they live celibate lives with their partners (right) and it is widely accepted that there are a number of deeply closeted gay bishops.

You can read our previous posts on some of this under the label Church of England.

The new Archibishop of Canterbury at least acknowledges that there's a problem.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has told the Church of England it may have to accept changes many members do not like for the sake of unity – as it prepares for a battle over wedding-like blessing services for gay couples. 

The Most Rev Justin Welby acknowledged that many Anglicans would view it as guilty of “betrayal” and even “apostasy” if it implements a landmark Church report which includes a recommendation to hold special services honouring same-sex relationships. 

But he warned that others would see the Church as increasingly “irrelevant” and promoting attitudes “akin to racism” over its response. 

In a personal address to the Church’s decision-making General Synod, which is meeting in London, he urged members not to be afraid of “incoherence and inconsistency” in some cases and “untidy” arrangements to avoid splits. 

He insisted that it was not “wishy-washy” to attempt to accommodate people with opposing views and said it was time for a massive “cultural change” in how it approaches disagreement.

Well, i don't think this is quite the way to solve the problem, Archbishop.  The bishops' latest is to say that while gay people are going to get married, they certainly won't and never will be married in church, and the best they can hope for is an informal blessing.  And those partnered gay clergy better not try to marry, no sir!  You can read the full text here.  So if they were trying to thread the needle, they have failed spectacularly.

As one blogger writes,

Members of my church have often said to me, ‘Rachel, we want you to be happy.’ They know I can be a miserable so and so (:-)) and they know that I am alone, without a partner. They want me to have a partner. They also know that this will not be the solution to everything, but who does not want the joy, challenge and reality of a loving relationship? ...  

But now if I and another woman fell in love and became deeply committed to each other we could – in the eyes of the secular state – get married. And there would be much rejoicing! There would even be bishops who’d be invited along to share in our joy. My congregation would no doubt want to come and throw confetti. 

And yet…the church qua church might ask me to leave a cherished ministry. In truth, if it wanted me and people like me so little, I’d probably just go. But the joy of being married to one’s beloved would bleed into the pain of being seen as one who is failing in God's love as it is being shown in the Church. 

I weep for all my sisters and brothers – good, ordinary and faithful LGBT Christians and clerics – who are in committed relationships and yet are being pushed ever to the outside where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. I sense God is weeping too.

Honestly, can they manage to be more tin-eared about this? And on Valentine's Day?

They are writing themselves into oblivion.  The Brits are far more supportive of marriage equality than the Yanks.  And the C of E is making itself increasingly irrelevant to the lives and experiences of the people of England.

Update:  The estimable Rev. Tobias Haller calls it incoherent hypocrsy, and writes,

It is as if we were living on Animal Farm: the values of monogamy, permanent fidelity and mutual love (which the document cites as evident in at least some same-sex relationships) can be erased from the constitution, leaving only "man" and "woman" — the crucial defining adjective "one" no longer being applicable, even, as has been noted, for the likely future governor of the church. The Bishops have hinged the sole significant virtue (fidelity and so on being all very well but not restricted to mixed-sex couples) upon heterosexuality itself. Gender has become a virtue, and virtue insignificant. And they have the gumption to call this the teaching of Christ.

Worth Quoting: fallout from the UK

The Houses of Parliament this week approved, and the Queen assented to, Marriage Equality.  Starting next year, gay couples in England and Wales can be married.  (Scotland and N. Ireland have substantially independence on the matter;  N.Ireland said "no", and Scotland is now considering but seems likely to agree).

The CoE Bishops who sit in the House of Lords ("the Lords Spiritual") have played their role;  Abp Welby voted for a "wrecking amendment" that would have scuppered the whole thing, as did several others.  Some bishops abstained from that vote.  After the vote went overwhelmingly for Equality, the Church of England dropped its official opposition to the new law. Of course that it oppose it to begin with was ridiculous.  Although the CoE is a state Church, it has ensured  that it not only NEED not, but it CANnot provide gay couples with marriage.  This careful protection of itself from gay cooties, along with its agonized twisting and turning over women bishops, has basically ensured its irrelevance. 

The response to the passage of the bill is as expected;  there is much gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes from the opponents, including the Roman Catholic Bishops, which has been described over at Thinking Anglicans.

One of the commenters of that post, who goes under the name "Interested Observer", posted the following, which I think is spot on.  S/he writes,

"right wing conservatives do not speak for the majority of Christians"
Unfortunately, the media narrative is that they do, just as bearded fascists speak for the majority of Muslims. Stephen Green and Anjem Choudrey are two sides of the same coin: media-savvy, simplistic, authoritarian and always available to the Newsnight researchers who have them on speed-dial. 

The problem with the likes of Choudrey and Green is that, for the naive, they set up a vision of "true" religion. That is then reflected in the likes of Richard Dawkins, who takes that fundamentalist discourse, and packages it up with "People of faith think like this, and if they don't, they aren't really members of their claimed faith". ...

Taken together, that is a powerful pressure on young, naive, new believers to choose broad-brush, un-nuanced and generally conservative positions (and churches) over more nuanced alternatives. It is quite clear, see also Alpha Course, that new arrivals into Christianity are often given the impression that homophobia, young-earth creationism and the rest are "real" Christianity, while the positions of the CofE and even the Catholic Church are weak and compromised. 

This is not helped by liberal CofE bishops whose pronouncements, cf. Rowan Williams, are incomprehensible and sound like weaselling to anyone not prepared to subject them to extensive exegesis (ie, almost everyone). The media has the choice: Green condemning homosexuals and threatening everyone with hellfire, or Rowan Williams saying something more suited for a supervision with a final year theology student. I suspect that young people coming to (or rejecting) Christianity, not having been raised in the CofE/ Methodism/etc could genuinely not know that there are alternatives to Christian Voice. 

We see the same thing here, where marriage equality is viewed as "anti-Christian" although given the number of churches marching joyfully in the recent San Diego Pride parade, it is clear that it takes a willful blindness to think so.

"Interested Observer" concludes,

Those of us who are not involved in churches, but see them as vital to our civil society, can only lament this, and hope that you get your act assembled before it's too late. Stop pandering to the reactionaries. Get out there, and tell people your good news.

Let's hope that wiser heads in the CoE hear this call!

Interestingly I was chatting with one of our blog friends over on FB, lamenting how far ahead the UK is in civil equality than we are.  But she pointed out that TEC is much farther ahead than the CoE, and envies that.  I think that you have been doing a better job of telling people your good news, especially after the last General Convention.  Seeing bishops step out and providing voices for social justice is a good thing. Identifying yourselves and reaching out is too.   Do it some more!

The C of E continues to stumble around the wood

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby writes,

Building real community means leaving space to accept all who come through the door and giving them the sense that the place to which they have come, the gap at the table, was there waiting especially for them. They may have disabilities (like many of us), or appear very on top of life. Either way the reality is of a community that is not there for its own sake but to bring those who find a place at its table to find a place at Gods’ table, where immeasurable love opens the way to extraordinary healing.

Very nice.  But coming on the heels of his speech in the House of Lords against the equal marriage bill,   it rings a bit hollow to the LGBT community, who apparently are still not really welcomed to that community.

Yesterday, the House of Lords continued debate on amendments to the bill.  Via twitter, I followed the debate via #equalmarriage, a hashtag heavily used by the equality supporters in the UK and Australia.

It was the Archbishop of York who took up the mantle of disapproval in yesterday's reading. Move along, nothing new to see here... but today, Andrew Brown shows some exasperation in the Guardian 

The archbishop, John Sentamu, asked: "What do you do with people in same-sex relationships that are committed, loving and Christian? Would you rather bless a sheep and a tree, and not them? However, that is a big question, to which we are going to come. I am afraid that now is not the moment."

No. It isn't. That moment passed years ago, when civil partnerships were first brought in, and the archbishop's was one of the loudest voices demanding that the Church of England have nothing to do with them. The bishops still don't realise what damage they did then.... 

.... they failed to listen to the weak because they thought the noisy bullies mattered more.

When civil partnerships came in, the two archbishops fought hard, along with the rest of the Church of England, to ensure that they had no religious or spiritual content at all. This was a monumentally stupid position for an established church to take, and the nation duly went ahead and injected its own spiritual contents, leaving the church looking like a whitewashed tomb.

Truly, it is quite amusing to see the CofE point at Civil Unions as a Very Good Thing when they vigorously opposed them.

Brown goes on to point out that the donnish types of the Established Church "got it" for years, and were tolerant.  But:

When the great evangelical backlash against gay people came in the 90s – culminating in 1998, when opposition to gay rights became one of the tests of orthodoxy within the Anglican communion and the main cause of its subsequent schism – the dons were all swept away.....

Retreating from the actual condition of the Church of England full of gay and tolerant people into a fantasy of an Anglican communion that had neither but would be "a global significant player" as George Carey once told the United Nations, the evangelical party made a church which could neither lead the nation morally nor even move with it and made instead a virtue of being out of touch. Looking at their church now, I remember Kipling's brutal epigram on a soldier shot for cowardice: "I could not face my death. This being known, / men led me to him, blindfold and alone."

ABC Justin and the march of history

Does anyone else find it faintly amusing that Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is supposed to be promoting healing and reunion? His expertise is in conflict resolution. But as Diarmaid MacCulloch comments in the NY Times, the Bishops of the C of E are caught between a rock and a hardplace, with gay people out of the closet and conservatives trying to shove them back inside.

The dilemma was captured in the performance of the archbishop of Canterbury during the Lords debate. A man normally characterized by shrewdness and sensitivity, he delivered an inept speech that began by saying how sad it was that the church had not supported equality for gay people in the past, and then went on to give some bizarre reasons as to why it would continue not supporting equality for them in the future. Having sort of hinted that his colleagues might be best not voting for Lord Dear’s amendment, he went on to vote for it himself.

The least the ABC could have done is abstain.  Don't tell us that there are sterling examples of gay partnerships and then slap us about the face.  promoting healing?  HA.

And then, of course, MacCulloch points out how the Bishops are now claiming to support civil partnerships, which of course they didn't, originally.

They insist that when Tony Blair’s Labour government introduced civil partnerships for same-sex couples, the bishops in the Lords were supportive of the introduction of civil partnerships. Read in detail the parliamentary proceedings at the time, and you will see that this claim has the plausibility of saying the dog ate their homework. But now they’re stuck with supporting civil partnerships, even for clergy, whom the Church of England ludicrously insists have to be celibate. (We are all waiting for the church to issue a code of conduct on exactly what this might mean: Which areas of the body should a clergy couple avoid mutually contacting, and how many inches away from them is O.K.?) 

"We've always been at war with Eastasia". Yeah, not so much.

Calling the C of E to account

As I reported in my last post, Andrew Brown in the the Guardian noted

If there is one thing that I have learned from the comments on this site in the last four years, it is that homophobia breeds hatred in return. A really significant proportion of the commenters who hate and despise Christianity do so because they feel that Christians stand for the hatred and contempt of gay people.

And for the CofE this is a powerful J'accuse.  While ABC Justin Welby admits that the C of E has treated LGBT people badly, he still voted to kill equality.  And despite the rumors, they were NOT in favor of blessings...

Gerry Lynch calls him to account:

Over the past 15 years, there has been a revolution in how same-sex relationships have been treated in law in the United Kingdom, as in most Western societies. The Church of England opposed nearly every step of that process, and in the few cases where it didn’t do so formally as a denomination, its Evangelical wing did so vociferously in the media, usually led in the public charge by Archbishop Carey and other senior bishops. And I mean every step – the equalisation of the age of consent; the abolition of the hateful Section 28; the granting of adoption rights to same sex couples; same-sex marriage. The introduction of civil partnerships was accompanied by an attempt to strip them of any social or spiritual meaning and constant denigration of gay and lesbian relationships; it remains forbidden to give civil partnerships any blessing in church. The outlawing of discrimination in employment saw the Church of England attempt to carve out as wide a scope as possible where it could continue to discriminate against queers. And, yes, it was about orientation rather than practice – ask Jeffrey John. 

That is the record. There is no point in trying to minimise or obfuscate it. A couple of hours with Google and Hansard will reveal it in almost every detail.
Justin Welby was mostly silent when all this was going on, and when he wasn’t he supported a homophobic party line.
...
But if the Church of England is serious about loving, including and accepting LGBT people, it needs to stop patronising us and it needs to stop deluding itself about its own record – for it deludes neither us nor society in general. 

‘Authenticity’ is one of the big mission buzzwords at present. There’s a need for a bit of authenticity here, and a good dollop of humility with it. If you only started saying nice things about same-gender relationships when the ‘threat’ of gay marriage emerged, be honest enough to admit it. As it stands, I doubt there is a LGBT person in the whole of England who actually believes you when you claim to oppose homophobia. 

The ‘party line’ is morally bankrupt and only leaves us divided and angry at one another. We desperately need some truth in the Church of England. In Christ, the truth is what sets us free.

On Bishops and Marriage.

In a big surprise, the British House of Lords voted overwhelmingly to approve the 2nd reading of a bill that would make marriage equality the law of the land.   Somewhat unexpectedly, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby voted to kill the bill.  I say "unexpectedly" because he had been offering an olive twig, acknowledging that gay relationships can be admirable.  But apparently, actually recognizing a marriage like mine will destroy straight marriages, cause people to divorce and cease procreating....well, we've heard all this before, and Welby is just the same-old same-old. 

 The Church of England certainly includes dissenting bishops, and marriage equality is strongly supported by the British people, but none of the 14 "Lords Spiritual" in attendance actually voted in favor of equality (though 5 did abstain).  Greasing the skids to oblivion.

From Welby, let's turn to Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Ill.  He attended an event discussing same sex marriage with pro-gay Sister Jeannine Gramick. And he got an earful.  Here's what the National Catholic Reporter tells us:

Paprocki said the church would love to welcome gay people but is forced into a defensive position by "activists pushing an agenda." That set off [Anne] Gray, who has a gay son... 

"Here I am," she said. "The big scary gay agenda."
...
"It is all about anecdotal stories," she said. "My son is a perfect human being. There is nothing intrinsically disordered about him. I know because I am his mother."... 

"You need to listen to mothers," she said.

Now, pay attention to the following bit (my emphasis)

One of the youngest people in the room said she was a devout Catholic, but when her aunt and sister told her they were gay, she was put on the spot. She asked Paprocki if she could remain a good Catholic and still support her family members in their desires to form lifelong relationships.

"It is a struggle to be a good Catholic while supporting gay marriage," the bishop said. "It strains your relationship with the church."

He said those who oppose the church on the issue should become Protestants. "They do a lot of good things too," he said.

Polls show that upwards of 60% of Roman Catholic laity upport marriage equality. Is the bishop really suggesting that they all leave the church? Because that will leave the pews awfully empty.

Writing in the Guardian about the UK situation, Andrew Brown notes

If there is one thing that I have learned from the comments on this site in the last four years, it is that homophobia breeds hatred in return. A really significant proportion of the commenters who hate and despise Christianity do so because they feel that Christians stand for the hatred and contempt of gay people.

Both Welby and Paprocki have the same problem. Their efforts to demonize gay people are leading to couples--mothers, and others-- to reject what their church has to offer, reject the church, and leave faith. This is not a strategy for long-term survival.

What's wrong with the Church of England?

This is a recipe for extinction not just for the CofE, but the Roman Catholic Church, and any other institution that is too ossified in its tradition, so that its reason to be is to maintain itself.

"What has happened is a complete disjunction between the values of the church and the values of the population," says Woodhead. "The church has clericalised until it's just clergy and lay ministers talking to each other. The public are not an audience for this debate. And you can't have a minority gospel for a majority religion." 

Nowhere is this clearer than in the absurd and humiliating tangle that the Church of England has got itself into about women priests. On Monday the church's bishops begin a two-day meeting that is meant to result in legislation that will lead to the appointment of women bishops in three years' time – assuming agreement is reached. And that really is the quickest that anything can happen.

While critics have argued that accepting women or LGBT people is "swaying with the popular culture",  I think it's more a case of evolution.   I think we can see, especially in the wake of GC 2012, that the  Episcopal Church is working to adapt.  And in biology, the rule is to adapt or die.

The Church of England, on the other hand, seems to hope that if it keeps doing the same thing, something will change.  

I believe that is called the definition of insanity.

Gay Bishops in the C of E?

Reflecting on the latest lunacy from the Church of EnglandGiles Fraser nails it:

"So, bishop, are you having sex with your partner?" I can't imagine anyone asking that question with a straight face..... Yet the new line from the C of E – ludicrously, that gay men in civil partnerships can be bishops as long as they refrain from sex (or to put it another way, we'll have gay bishops as long as they are not really gay) raises the question: how on earth will the authorities ever find out? .... No, the only way the bedroom police could ever really know is if they ask and play a moral guilt trip about honesty on those being interrogated. So do sexually active gay priests or bishops have a moral responsibility to tell the truth? Actually, I think not. I'd go further: in this situation, they have a moral responsibility to lie.

....It is perfectly proper that ordinarily people should maintain a strong presumption in favour of truth telling. But the situation in which gay people in the church find themselves is far from ordinary. Physical intimacy is a moral good, the very incarnation of love. Those who enforce celibacy on the basis of sexuality are maintaining a system of oppression that brings misery and loneliness to many.

I believe all Christians have a moral duty to resist this cruelty. Lying to the church authorities, in these conditions, is a bit like disobeying an unjust order. It's a form of non-violent resistance.

If there is blame for all of this it must lie with the church itself. Through fear, it encourages people to live a lie, to build their whole identity upon untruth. Thus so many gay clergy have clandestine existences, lavender marriages and unexplained holidays....

This outward lie makes a certain sort of truth possible. After all, sex between partners is, at best, a precious communication of truth. And this is the greater truth here, a truth that is as much about our relationship with God as everything else. For the love that dare not speak its name is love itself. This is the truth that needs protecting – by a lie if necessary.

When Bishops are Afraid

From PinkNews, an update about the Church of England's response to the UK government's effort to lock them out of performing same sex marriages  (my emphasis):

The Telegraph now reports church officials have acknowledged that they could potentially “live with” the government’s proposals and its specific legal safeguards..... 

Meanwhile, the House of Lords heard claims that several bishops secretly support the principle of equal marriage but are afraid to speak out because it would contradict the official policy of the church. 

Lord Harries of Pentregarth, the former Bishop of Oxford, said that many bishops not only accept the protections the government proposes but would actively support equal marriage.
He said many church members “warmly welcome” the government’s plans, adding: “A fair number of individual bishops in the Church of England also support it, but are not able to say so publicly at the moment because of the political situation in which the Church of England now finds itself.” 

The Bishop of Salisbury and the Bishop of Buckingham have so far openly supported marriage rights for gay couples.

That's a sorry state of affairs, leaving Bishops of Salisbury and Buckingham on their own.

Now, some will say that because Bishops are in it for the long haul, collegiality in their body is important.  But surely it's possible to disagree politely.  Surely it's worth it to explain to the public that not EVERYONE in the C of E hierarchy is stuck in an Angela Thirkell novel ca. 1935.

It's of a piece with the essay I wrote here  back in 2011 on the need for C of E bishops to come out as leaders.  And those who are gay should come out, period.  It's time to get out of the closet and stand in the light.

It's called leadership.

It's called honesty.

And it's the right thing to do.

No weddings in the C of E: government to make them illegal

From the BBC:

THE Government's Bill to introduce same-sex marriage will make it clear that it is illegal for any Church of England minister to marry a same-sex couple.

The Government therefore assists the Church of England to make it official: the C of E will have no measurable relevance to the lives of modern people.

From Benny's Blog:

While the opportunity will be created for churches in general to ‘opt in’ to celebrating same-sex Marriages, Anglican churches will not have this provision. The statement today made it clear that one of the ‘quadruple locks’ to protect religious belief and practice, will be specific legislation making it illegal for the Church of England (and Church in Wales) to conduct same-sex marriages.

For me and many others this will be a safeguard too far.It will mean that even when (in years to come) the CofE changes its mind, it will require a change in primary legislation before same-sex marriages can take place in parish churches. Unlike other religious institutions, the CofE will not be able to vote to ‘opt in’ – it will have to ask the Government to change to law.

This has been presented as a further reassurance to the Church of England (& Wales) but it only reassures those who want to stop same-sex marriage in the first place. There are many others who have been appalled by the Church response to these issues. We do not want the CofE excluded from the ability to ‘opt in’ when that view achieves a majority. We do not want to be treated differently from other churches and religious groups. We do not want to see such discrimination cast into law.If the Church of England welcomes these new ‘safe-guards’ the real effect of the ‘quadruple lock’ announced today will be to ensure that LGB&T couples are left in no doubt that the Church of England is locking and bolting the door to them for as long as it possibly can. It will send out a clear message – “You are not welcome here.” 

....If the CofE welcomes these safeguards today, it will be demonstrating that the Church of England only now exists to protect itself against social change – in relation to women, in relation to LGB&T people, and in relation to the State.

The trouble with locked doors is that they tend of keeping everyone out who doesn’t have the right key. Is that really the kind of church we want to be?

Has the established C of E outlived its usefulness?

Poor old Church  of England; first it drops the ball on the issue of women bishops, as an unsatisfactory compromise measure liked by no-one fails to pass;  then, it issues a huffy response to the Government's push for full equal marriages for gays, the government including the ability to solemnize said marriages in churches willing to do so.  Political observers comment that the Government is probably done listening to the C of E, because after the debacle over women bishops, they seem to be completely out of touch with modern Britain.

Giles Fraser looks at the history of the Church of England, and how historically its media via helped paper over the differences between the "sides" and avoid another Civil War.

We saw ourselves as the world's natural compromisers. Unlike those of continental Europe, we prized ourselves on being uncomfortable with ideology and strong feelings. The big idea was the big tent. All are welcome as long as they leave behind passionate religious and political differences. That was the price of social togetherness. And that, indeed, was the value of established religion to the state. 

But this big tent idea of the Christian religion, enshrined in law, has been undone from two directions. From an increasingly secular society where religious differences are no longer a threat to wider civil society; and from a church that has given up on the project of national togetherness as it has been replaced by global Anglicanism – complete with aggressively homophobic Ugandan bishops and the like. The reason the failure of the female bishops measure feels like a historical watershed is that it marks the clear point where the church is no longer of any use to the state. Indeed, it has become a liability. If divorce was an easy option, we would now be divvying up our DVDs. 

There is also a wider lesson in all of this. For the failure of the C of E's big tent experiment is parallel to the failure of New Labour's big tent experiment with which it had so much in common. Chantal Mouffe rightly argues that the third way was a mistaken attempt to bypass the inherently conflictual nature of the political. Bland, suffocating unanimity cannot replace the reality of political differences. In theology as in politics, conflict is real. The important thing is not that we mustn't fight. That is inevitable. It's rather that we mustn't draw blood when doing so.

Meanwhile, today David Cameron, the Prime Minister, came out firmly in favor of same sex marriages in church (if said church is willing) .

Mr Cameron said: "I'm a massive supporter of marriage and I don't want gay people to be excluded from a great institution. 

"But let me be absolutely 100% clear: if there is any church or any synagogue or any mosque that doesn't want to have a gay marriage it will not, absolutely must not, be forced to hold it. 

"That is absolutely clear in the legislation...."

Will Dr Welby be the right medicine for the C of E?

Another election has been going on, that of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, current Bishop of Durham.  Of course, it's really only an election within the Super Secret Crown Nominations Committee.  And we found out early,  because the bookies in England saw a run up on his name;  apparently some people did the equivalent of insider trading prior to the announcement.  Yet the British find our democratic polity "unseemly". Go figure.

From the Guardian

Bishop Welby is an interesting guy, very Establishment (Eton and Cambridge), with a distinguished career in the oil business.  So he had a profession apart from the Church, reminiscent of TEC Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori.  It seems that his path started to change with the tragic death of his infant daughter 30 years ago.  Since ordination in '93, he's had a meteoric rise, including Dean of Liverpool Cathedral, and has only been Bishop for a year.

He represents the "Evangelical" side of the Church of England, not to be confused with the American definition of Evangelical (which in the US is often paired with "fundamentalist" or "wingnut").  It's apparently traditional to go back and forth between the Evangelical and Catholic sides for ABC;  think of this as the long-standing balance between low Church and high Church, Roundhead and Cavalier, Wesley and Newman, Cambridge and Oxford....

He also has a strong background in conflict resolution particularly in Africa, which he'll need to wrangle the Anglican Communion and the disparate parts of the Church of England.  I suspect this is a huge part of his nomination.

Welby is pro-women bishops and while he has been an opponent to marriage equality in the past, apparently his views are "evolving". Really?  Hmmmm.

This matters in the UK, where there are robust civil unions but a strong movement (driven by the Tories, believe it or not....take a lesson, Republicans) for civil marriage.  The CofE has been adamantly opposed.  Welby's a supporter of the emphatically negative Bishop's statement, as discussed in these comments at The Lead, and has reaffirmed his support for it.  So perhaps he's just being politic.  Yes, I'm a cynic.

Remember,  there is no separation of Church and State in the UK.  The bishops of the CofE sit in the House of Lords, along with life peers and hereditary peers.  (Think of our Senate not being elected, but full of Bishops and Romneys and Bushes!)   And if you are the average Brit, pretty much you are entitled to get married in the Church if you want to, so they can't just send you along to the registrar's office for not being a formal member.  And therefore, they get to make the rules for all the other churches too.

I have many friends in the UK, most of whom are scientists and basically small-r republicans.  They don't really like the idea of the Queen, and most are not believers or practitioners of faith.  The CofE is relevant to them only as a residual cultural identity. For the Church to adamantly opposed civil marriages is infuriating to them, and driving the church into complete irrelevance.

It's the challenge of how to be prophetic in a modern world, rather than wistful for a past long gone.

Generally, people seem to be hopeful about Welby.  And he has a sense of humor.

“I’ve got a better barber and spend more on razors than Rowan Williams.”

I hope he has a better idea of how to unite his fractious Communion than Williams did.

Has the C of E jumped the shark?

I don't usually pay much attention to the goings on over the Pond. However, in not one, not two, but in three recent events, the mandarins of the Church of England have behaved in a way that is so tone deaf towards its own people, so retrograde and indeed vicious, as to appear to be wishing for its own demise.

The first occasion concerns the so-called Anglican Covenant, which is a thinly-veiled effort to punish the annoying Americans (and Canadians and New Zealanders, etc) by relegating them to second-tier or outsider status in an ecclesiastical hierarchy with whiffs of Roman Catholic authority. In a loss of face for Abp Rowan Williams, a majority of his own dioceses have rejected this anti-Anglican power grab.

But just when you thought that the decisive rejection under the regular rules of the C of E put the nail in the coffin, we are pointed to certain…. shall we say, manipulations? that suggest an age-old trick: if you don't get the result you want, change the rules. Most of us call that cheating, and consider it ill-becoming a person of faith. From Simple Massing Priest,

What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is the early stages of an unseemly attempt at political hardball from the smoke-filled backrooms of Church House, Lambeth Palace and the Anglican Communion Office. This data is going to be used to justify some sort of General Synod resolution to affirm the Anglican Covenant despite the defeat in the diocesan synods.

Oh yes, it will not "adopt" the Covenant - but the message will be clear. The ecclesiastical bureaucrats are not about to allow the ephemeral concept of due process to get in the way of their project to recast the Anglican Communion from a fellowship of autonomous churches into a centralized, unitary and curial body.

So much for letting your "no mean no".

Our second unseemly event shows precisely the same thing: if you don't get the result you want, change the rules. Stack the deck, skew the system, and pull any underhanded political trick necessary. In this case, insiders have attempted to scupper the over-due recognition of women as suitable bishops, with the addition poison-pill amendments that were already rejected. The strategy here is very wink wink nudge nudge; let the little ladies wear a mitre but you and I know they aren't REALLY bishops. Not like the boys who pee standing up. Some of whom are closeted gay men.

Finally, the most recent and ridiculous event was the release of an anonymous statement purporting the speak for the C of E claiming that the British government's plan to recognize civil marriages between gay people would create the biggest rupture and gravest threat to the Church in its 500 years. Remarkably, this document claims that the C of E has actually supported gay civil rights.

This is a patent lie, says Giles Fraser, as he points out the evidence to the contrary. He writes further

"The greatest threat to the church in 500 years." Do us a favour. Worse than the dissolution of the monasteries? Worse than secularisation? It is telling evidence of the irrational fear that the church leadership has of gay people that they are prepared to make such ridiculous statements. And as a threat specifically to marriage, what about divorce? Unlike homosexuality, this is a subject on which Jesus was pretty specific, but the C of E is perfectly prepared to marry divorced couples. Indeed, they are perfectly happy to marry gay people too – just so long as they marry people of the opposite sex. For years, gay men and women have been pressured into lavender weddings and often lives of misery so as to live out a model of supposed respectability. The church has blessed these marriages, and blessed pets and battleships, but they won't allow gay people who love each other to make lifelong commitments in the sight of God.

And he concludes, speaking for many,

The church is no more a cartel of moral wisdom. And those of us who still stick with it – though there are days like today when this is increasingly hard – do so in the hope that it can be called back to a deeper moral seriousness that is not in hoc to bourgeois notions of respectability and prejudice. This is not a great day to be a member of the Church of England. I am simply ashamed.

Many of our C of E friends are deeply, deeply hurt by these machinations. In some cases, to the point where they feel that they have been driven out of a church which they no longer recognize. The C of E of gently absent minded vicars, warm-hearted volunteers, church fetes, and reliable moral decency seems an ancient anachronism, wrapped in lavender and put away in the cedar chest. Instead, there is a faceless entity dedicated to preserve the privilege of a core of old men. As the headline in the Guardian put it, they are become a church fit only for bigots and hypocrites.

If they want to be stand against the tide of human dignity, then there is only one thing for it:

It's time to disestablish them, and leave them on the fringes of polite society, with the fundamentalists of other sorts.

A letter to Rowan

We talked previously about how the legal minds of the CofE have gone to great lengths to figure out how they can ask the right questions about sex in order to ensure no problematically gay bishop is appointed. (This works only as long as those who are already appointed keep to their closets. Which is why Gay Bishops Should Come Out.)

The LGBT-led Metropolitan Community Church scolds Rowan Williams for the hair splitting.H/T to Thinking Anglicans:

We understand that the legal advice suggests that there should be no bar, per se, to gay men serving as bishops provided that they repent of any same sex activity before they entered the priesthood, have lived by the requirement to be celibate since ordination and promise to continue to be celibate.

We feel that the spectacle of the Church of England trying to avoid complying with the law is unedifying and betrays a deep unease about the wonderful diversity of human sexuality. ...

We also think the policy of requiring celibacy will simply make the Church of England look even more ridiculous and open yourselves up to the most dreadful kind of casuistry as people wonder what, exactly celibacy requires. Could, for example, a gay bishop kiss his partner? Does the bishop and his partner have to sleep in separate rooms in the episcopal palace, or would twin beds in the same room suffice? If twin beds are acceptable what would be a “celibate” distance between the beds – 5 feet, 10 feet, or opposite ends of the room? Do any lapses in this celibacy rule have to be reported and, if so, to whom? The Archbishop of the Province? Her Majesty The Queen? The Prime Minister? The Diocesan Synod or just the local press? ....

We are an lgbt-led church, yet we talk far more about mission than we do about sexuality. We commend this approach to you.

Heh.

I have often said that I will be very happy to stop talking about sexuality as soon as other people stop making it an issue.