Living in Love and Faith
They-dies and gentle-thems, we are going to talk about sex. Identity, sexuality, relationships, and marriage, to be precise. But a lot of that does generally involve sex, so let’s be honest about it, so our conversation is robust and healthy, and above all, accurate.
The current doctrine and practice of the Church of England (CofE) is that sex should be only within a marriage, marriage is a monogamous commitment between one man and one woman, and same-sex relationships are not the ideal. Ours is a wonderful congregation in which lie many opinions about everything including this area of life. This is to be welcomed, even when some opinions do not agree with our own. Christian views on sex and gender are many and varied, and we accept that at St Johns - no one is unwelcome.
Just to be clear - here at St John’s, we believe LGBT+ people and their relationships are valid and good, with the potential for blessing, righteousness and holiness as they live out their God-given queer lives. No sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression of either is innately less than ideal. LGBT+ people are an integral and celebrated part of our community, and their presence, involvement and leadership is not just welcome but encouraged. Relationships of love and faithfulness are a joy to cherish, and being able to live out one’s authentic gender identity is a joy to discover and affirm.
Agree or not, I will reiterate, no one is unwelcome at St John’s. The above is not a statement of belief to which anyone has to sign up. If you disagree with the above, you are still truly welcome and we want to hear your voice too. We are blessed to have you as part of our community.
Why am I bringing this up? St John’s is a parish in the Church of England. Our national church is suffering in many ways due to the unresolved situation of a range of opinions and beliefs about this topic within our communities. No one likes the way things are and all are agreed it should not be tolerated. So as an institution, the CofE has published a large project this month, which has been long in the making. It is called Living in Love and Faith (LLF). It consists of a 450+ page book, 17 videos, 16 podcasts, a 5-part course and 300 further resources, all of which are available online upon free sign-up to the LLF hub. We will be engaging with it and doing the short course as a parish. In case you don’t know where it came from, here’s some details and a potted history (for details, see this timeline, and for the thoughts of someone who was there for some of it, see here).
The CofE has published a lot of reports and statements about sexuality, from discussion in the 1600s about clergy celibacy (when the traditional understanding of marriage was reformed) through to contraception in the 1900s (after a few decades of resistance, it was decided that actually God approved of a couple deciding how many children to (not) have). The CofE started on sexual orientation specifically as the UK moved to decriminalise sexual acts between men in the 1950s*. The latest guidance that still holds as the official CofE statement is the 48 page Issues in Human Sexuality from 1991 (I was not even born!).
Some titbits for you:
“the ideal of lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual union as the setting intended by God for the proper development of men and women as sexual beings. Sexual activity of any kind outside marriage comes to be seen as sinful, and homosexual practice as especially dishonourable”
“It is clear that bisexual activity must always be wrong for this reason, if for no other, that it inevitably involves being unfaithful”
“the clergy cannot claim the liberty to enter into sexually active homophile relationships”
In 2003, the 358 page Some Issues in Human Sexuality sought to expand and affirm all these things with a little bit of discussion on dissenting views. Elsewhere, the House of Bishops agreed that it is valid to hold a view “regarding gender reassignment as ‘a fiction’”. However, in 2018 they showed support for transgender people.
Our story begins a mere 7 years ago in 2013 when the church published the Pilling Report, a 221 page document by the Working Group on Human Sexuality. This was an extraordinary report that showed genuine attempts to hear what people’s real experiences were, and seemed to have heard something of the shift in understanding of gender and sexuality that has been happening in places like the UK and USA for decades.
One of several recommendations the Pilling report made (page 149) was that “The subject of sexuality, with its history of deeply entrenched views, would best be addressed by facilitated conversations or a similar process to which the Church of England needs to commit itself at national and diocesan level. This should continue to involve profound reflection on the interpretation and application of Scripture.”
The CofE took up this recommendation, and launched the Shared Conversations which ran 2014-16. These were facilitated sit-downs where small groups discussed ‘Given the significant changes in our culture in relation to human sexuality, how should the Church respond?’ at various levels of the church hierarchy. The subsequent report from the House of Bishops was brought for approval to General Synod, the governing body at national level, in February 2017. But, in a move that shocked many, the report was rejected by almost everyone. The conservatives hated it because they thought it was a Trojan horse for doctrinal change; the progressives hated it because they saw it as an inadequate response to Pilling and the Shared Conversations; and so it failed the vote to even ‘take note’ of it, normally a mere formality in the bureaucracy of Synod. The Archbishop of Canterbury responded, boldly talking of needing “a radical new Christian inclusion in the Church” and the bishops shelved their suggestion of a new teaching document.
What emerged instead was LLF, a project to produce a collection of resources on “Christian teaching and learning about identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage”. The project was started in summer 2017 and planned to be published in time for the Lambeth Conference 2020. The Bishop of Coventry headed the co-ordinating committee which oversaw four working groups, each made up of a range of people (lay and ordained, chaired by bishops) and each taking a subtopic - Biblical Studies, Theology, History, Social and Biological Sciences. 48 people were involved as official group members, including some who dropped out before the end of the project.
A wonderful part of this collection is an emphasis on listening to stories. The videos are snapshots of Christians telling their stories, in their own words, with no evaluation or judgement. The book chapters are separated by ‘Encounters’, which are yet more stories. The podcasts are genuine conversations, modelling the sort of discussion this resource hopes to start.
Unlike previous publications, LLF does not make any recommendations. It tries to exemplify a way of having the conversation in the hopes that this way will be more fruitful than previous attempts which have devolved into toxic debate and acrimony. The hope is that in the next few years, more definite questions to be decided and answered will emerge. If you want to get a feel for how the resources have been received so far, this page is being frequently updated with articles and blogs on the reactions.
Three things to note. First, the groundwork for the Church’s intended method of having this next phase of engagement about sexuality and gender can be found in the Pastoral Principles. These are commended to the CofE community for the sake of building up trust when discussing a topic that is intensely personal, and for many, has been traumatic within Christian contexts. We are all called to reject six evils and take up four actions of love.
Second, there may not be any decisions about doctrine or practice that have yet been tabled to be made out of this process, but there are some hoped-for learning outcomes, like “find help for everyday Christian discipleship in all its diversity, physicality, messiness and grittiness”.
And third, and this is where at St John’s we are pricking up our ears, the Next Steps Group has been formed to support the church now that the resources have been unleashed on us. At all levels, we - the Church - are being asked to engage with these resources and feedback. The timeline hoped for looks like this - “Engagement will need to be during 2021 so that processes of discernment and decision-making can take place in 2022” ie if anything is going to be voted on by Synod, it’s going to be when they meet in 2022.
[Edit] The latest timeline at Synod Nov 2021 hopes that we will engage and respond until feedback closes April 30th 2022. Then “the findings of ‘Listening to the Whole Church’ and the resource, ‘The Gift of the Church’, are published in a variety of media” in September 2022. And then General Synod will “consider proposals from the College and House of Bishops and agree a clear direction of travel” in February 2023.
This is a process that must be engaged with properly. A lot of people already have strong opinions about this topic, but I want to emphasise an important point about attitude that is made in the first podcast. To qualify as appropriately engaged with this material as it was intended to be received, we must have the acceptance and ability to be vulnerable. Now, for some, this will not be possible, and that is understandable. But for those who are able, I agree with those involved that this is the best way to approach these resources and conversations.
Here at St John’s, we plan to take up the call to engage, and to engage well. The first task is simply to receive the resources that have been published, so please dive in. As I listed above, once you sign up for free to the LLF hub, there is a cornucopia of offerings. I have the physical book, but the pdf has its own merits, especially to dip in and out of. I am trying to listen to the podcasts (~40min) and watch the videos (~5min) as I eat lunch each day, which is a fairly relaxed and enjoyable exercise. I suspect reading the book will be more of a chore! For the more academic or curious, the library of articles looks like an astonishing gift of deep thinking and discussion about specific topics in more detail. As we move into 2021, our current plan is to run the 5-part short course over Lent.
[Edit] Covid cancelled these plans. To see what we’ve been up to in the autumn of 2021, see our LLF page.
Talking about identity, sex etc can feel really personal, private and intrusive. The hope for the LLF process, as I understand it, is that we feel informed and empowered to have and share opinions without framing anything antagonistically. Sex should not be a bad or scary topic, and I can only hope that in going forward, we will be able to talk about it safely, openly and sometimes rather frankly. Do look after yourselves - the clergy are available if you would like to talk or need help.
On a personal note, as an ordained bisexual, I am very excited by this process. Navigating through the painful mess that this discussion in my beloved CofE has become is incredibly important to me, as I seek to serve God faithfully, join in God’s mission, and love all those made in God’s image. I am committed to tending the wounds of the LGBT+ community and working for justice, and also discerning what it means to love and reconcile with those who believe living out our identities is sinful, which I hope I can do by following Jesus’ example of righteousness and mercy.
The call is to listen, and as a queer person, I know how much I value being heard. But I cannot expect that of those who disagree with me if I am not willing to listen as well. That does not mean acceptance of abuse, or giving up on making changes that I think are right. It means learning from someone else’s deep love of scripture, recognising that their desperation to live as God wills echoes my own, and understanding their concern for creation and its people. If they can come into this conversation motivated by love, then so should I.
I want to end with a useful reflection from an answer to a question to the House of Bishops at this year’s General Synod. There were various questions about LLF but, as with the book itself, much anxiety and disagreement about sexual orientation boils down to the authority of the Bible. This is a useful reminder of the CofE’s principle position and I want to commend it to you as you start to think about identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage as Christians:
“The classic Anglican expression of the use of Holy Scripture, found in Richard Hooker and elsewhere, is that we read scripture as our primary source in the light of the Church’s tradition of Biblical understanding, deploying our God-given faculty of reason – reason itself being shaped by the living tradition of the Church as it seeks to be formed by God’s Spirit.”
The Rev’d Georgina Elsey
*which did not truly conclude until 2013, and it took until January 2020 for all the UK to legalise same-sex marriage, so it is still debatable whether being not-heterosexual is actually decriminalised in this country even now; and things are still legally a lot worse of transgender people and gender minorities
