The article is an important contribution to the debate following the recently published LLF material by the Church of England on the House of Bishops' discussions. The House of Bishops have stalled (killed?) any meaningful progress in proceeding with Living in Love and Faith, much to the dismay, despair, indeed anger, of the LGBT+ community who feel they have been sold down the river by bishops seeking a spurious, unachievable unity within the Church of England.
Clergy is non celibate gay marriages have had their hope of progress dashed and there will be no progress towards permitting same-sex marriage in Church of England authorised services until a two thirds majority of each House of General Synod agrees.
It has been suggested that even stand-alone services of blessing in church of same sex couples are not permitted, although blessings within an authorised service are to continue. But is it a doctrinal issue requiring two thirds majorities? Rightly in my opinion the writer of the article begs to disagree.
The following article hopefully will lift some of the despondency and anguish currently felt in liberal and progressive circles.
Crumbs of Comfort: Standing together for Standalone Services
Writer: David Runcorn
Canon Simon Butler was for some years one of the most senior priests in General Synod and a member of the Archbishops' Council. He is Rector of Holy Trinity & St Mary’s Guildford .
'The crumbs of Living in Love and Faith (LLF) are meagre. Institutionally-speaking, the Church of England is almost as unwelcoming to those LGBT+people who wish to celebrate their life-long commitment before God as it was before LLF began. Whatever happened to “radical new Christian inclusion”?
Personally, it is deeply disillusioning. Once more, my work as a priest has been undermined by the actions of the House of Bishops, my calling questioned, our classic Anglican welcome to all compromised. The bishops forever tell us to be hopeful, to keep faith, and always disappoint, often diminishing my sense of vocation into a job. Their decisions this week will have the effect of doing this for many, condemning the Church to a morale-sapping war of attrition.
But however passive-aggressively hostile the Church of England remains for same-sex couples, at the local level things are often different. At Holy Trinity & St Mary’s, Guildford, I have used Prayers of Love and Faith(PLF) in two standalone services since they were permitted and would welcome further enquires (check the website!). They have been simple occasions of quiet joy. The pastoral task laid upon me by my ordination vows and the mission of God in this community is more important than allowing an illegitimate request from the House of Bishops to get in the way.
Illegitimate? Absolutely. Throughout the LLF process in General Synod, I asked the House of Bishops repeatedly what prevented me from using the PLF resources in standalone services. The response was always the same request: please don’t. Now, with the news that the bishops want clergy not to use PLF resources in standalone services until General Synod has achieved a two-thirds majority, is this anything more than a reasonable request? I say that it is. I say it is an illegitimate piece of overreach by our bishops that clergy are at liberty to ignore.
At my licensing, I made a solemn affirmation of canonical obedience to my Bishop (I don’t swear oaths on conscience grounds). In granting me his licence, my Bishop gave me the liberty to exercise my ministry within the bounds of the doctrine and Canons of the Church of England. It’s a quid pro quo: clergy minister within those boundaries, our bishops give us freedom to minister according to our consciences to the fullest extent of those boundaries. (I note in passing the widespread disobedience to the Canons by Evangelicals and Catholics that is never challenged. Liturgical illegality is endemic among Charismatic Evangelicals[1]; bishops wave monstrances at Benediction without a second thought).
When the House of Bishops published and commended the PLF resources they declared that there was nothing in them contrary to the doctrine of the Church of England. They permitted them to be used in existing authorised services, but not in standalone services. This was a liturgical innovation for our Church – worship resources that can only be used in certain services and not in others. Ironically, such a change may itself require a two-thirds majority in General Synod!
When I have offered standalone PLF services in the past two years, following a unanimous PCC decision, I have done this because the Canons of the Church of England permit it. Canon B5 (On the discretion of ministers in conduct of public worship) is quite explicit: “The minister having the cure of souls may on occasions for which no provision is made…use forms of service considered suitable by him [sic] for those occasions and may permit another minister to use the said form of service.” They must be “reverent or seemly” and shall “be neither contrary to, nor indicative of any departure from, the doctrine of the Church of England in any essential matter.” In short, I am using the discretion given to me at my licensing to exercise pastoral ministry within canonical boundaries. I understand that the legal and theological advice the House has recently received says nothing that would contradict this view.
I would go further – something the bishops have accepted throughout LLF despite the objections of conservatives: that there is legitimate disagreement about what is an “essential” matter of doctrine. With such latitude, faced with a simple request not to use the resources in standalone services, I believe I am free to say, with politeness and respect, “you ask of me something you are not at liberty to ask.” Less politely put, “wind your necks in.”
Some clergy will be worried about being disobedient to their bishops, but I hope this makes it clear that this is a matter of canonical freedom that already exists for clergy, and that it would be an illegitimate use of episcopal power, if not a matter of discipline, for a bishop to threaten those who do with any repercussions. It is time to challenge the bishops here, especially as they have so clearly buckled to the threats and deep pockets of The Alliance.
But perhaps the bishops aren’t saying quite what we think. I think it is possible to interpret the bishops’ decision on standalone services as simply saying that it would require a two-thirds majority in Synod in order for them to become an authorised liturgy; and not that clergy should desist from exercising their existing discretion in the Canons to conduct standalone services. I shall be continuing to do offer such services, and would welcome the opportunity to challenge the legal basis of any attempt to prevent me.
When the Gospel was preached in synagogues by the early followers of The Way, it often faced opposition. The response of the disciples was to turn to the Gentiles. Faced with the inability of the institutional church – led by its bishops – to allow the good news of God’s love to be available to all who love well and with holiness, perhaps it falls, despite the inevitable postcode lottery, to the parochial clergy of the Church of England to do what the bishops are clearly unable to do.'
[1] In his most recent Ad Clerum a diocesan bishop writes “I would love to see every church re-establish a communal confession and absolution.” I would expect a bishop in the Anglican tradition to require it!
I would like to see Together for the Church of England compile a directory of parishes willing to hold stand-alone services of blessing. Like Simon Butler I too would welcome guidance on the legal basis for preventing stand-alone services.
See this comment by Robert Thompson
'Simon Butler speaks I think for the majority of clergy here ♥️;
Now is the time to simply do ‘stand-alone’ services for happily married #LGBTQIA+ couples even if the @churchofengland bishops @CottrellStephen @bishopSarahM & the rest of them have said we can’t.
The vicious campaign against allowing even this minute piece of pastoral care, has been constituted by deeply un Christlike bullying: the withdrawal of contributions to dioceses, threats to leave the church if it was allowed…
The irony here of course is that this has been done by many of the same people who disregard using common prayer, proper liturgy & virtually every other piece of our inherited polity….
There is much nonsense that so many are allowed to get away with & it includes real harm to queer people through conversion therapy & prayer ministry & yet the bishops in the face of such abuse to nothing at all.
Now is the time to challenge their collective immorality. Now is the time to say enough is enough. Now is the time to bless love in its wonderful, colourful, variety of forms.
May God’s reign of justice & peace come. 🌈🏳️⚧️'
Since publishing the above I have read this excellent article by Nicholas Adams:
Adversaries: Living in Love and Faith
Adventures in the Theology of Disappointment
The Bishops of the Church of England have decided together that there will be no change in the foreseeable future to its practices in relation to gay couples.
This means that there can be prayers for married couples in regular church services, but no special services. It also means that gay clergy cannot get married at all, whether in church or in a civil marriage.
(Those interested in the technicalities: these deeper changes require legislation of a kind that is almost impossible to obtain in practice.)
Why?
What they say: unity is more important than change.
What they mean: a powerful minority has got its way.
Minority? Yes, it is a minority who are determined that there should be no marriage services for gay Christians. This requires a bit of nuance, which I shall now attempt.
Meanwhile: a conservative Anglican group of African and other bishops has just (days ago) expressed its dismay at the news that a woman who refuses to denounce homosexual marriage has been named the next Archbishop of Canterbury. This group, Gafcon, is all male in both its leadership and its advisory group. Unity is already under threat, in other words.
Living in Love and Faith is the name of a process, now five years old, for encouraging conversation between those in the Church of England who hold different and often opposing views about gay relationships.
It has an odd and unsatisfactory character: the idea was to bring together opposing sides.
This is odd and unsatisfactory because, well, it establishes the reality of opposing sides.
There are indeed opposing sides, namely those who strongly affirm gay relationships and those who strongly denounce them. Members of these groups are not going to change their minds and do not expect to change the minds of their opponents. They were already in an adversarial relation.
But a lot of CofE folk were in 2020 trying to figure out what they thought; or they were thinking one thing but open to thinking another; or were changing what they thought. What side were they on? Neither. Were they in adversarial relationship with others? Not really.
Living in Love and Faith was not intended to create opposing sides. But its adversarial structure (to be contrasted with its non-adversarial tone and intent) in practice led individuals and even churches to declare which side they were on before the process got underway.
The adversarial structure created adversaries.
A contrast with a General Election is instructive. We know that there are many people in England who do not belong to a political party and whose vote is uncertain. And they do not need to declare their vote. But in the LLF process, the structure encouraged people to think of themselves as members of a party, and encouraged them to declare their allegiance.
This has had some bad effects.
Those with complex or shifting views ended up declaring simple and static views.
Those with affirming views who were part of non-affirming families and churches ended up declaring non-affirming views.
Those who might have been slowly (or quickly) changing their minds ended up stuck where they began.
Why? Because of the dynamics of families and churches, and especially in relation to things like sponsorship, patronage, and employment.
These bad effects create further odd effects.
For example, if someone declares that they are affirming, they are probably affirming. But if someone declares that they are non-affirming, they might be non-affirming, but they also might be stuck.
Living in Love and Faith was intended to unstick things, but for the most part it has created quite a large group of stuck Anglicans who declare themselves non-affirming because there is no way out. The adversarial structure requires them to declare allegiance to a party to which they do not necessarily belong.
It's as though a group of benign Christian physicists, faced with Schroedinger's cat, decide that the box should always be open from the start. Except that in this case, it turns out that the cat is always dead.
There are in fact many non-affirming churches with a significant number of members who are affirming. That is true of my own. But the LLF process inhibits finding this out.
This is especially true of a group often called 'conservative Christians' or, even more so, 'Evangelical Christians'. These groups display broad internal diversity. There are many within them who affirm gay relationships as fully Christian. But if their churches want access to the parallel financial structures of well-funded conservative groups, or if individuals want to be ordained in the service of their churches, they must declare themselves non-affirming. Which they do, with all the moral horror that accompanies it.
It is possible to denounce such folk as spineless, or cowardly, or worse. I take a different view. It costs me nothing to declare that I affirm gay relationships as fully Christian. I am slow to judge those for whom the cost is significant.
The House of Bishops statement on 15 October is, I think, the outcome of a series of forces that are not readily observable.
It will appear that 'the church' is inhospitable to gay couples. But this is, in a very real sense (old Anglican joke!), not true. Or not straightforwardly true.
As long as there is an adversarial process, which is what LLF is, and as long as everyone must look inside the box at the start, which LLF encourages, there are going to be odd and unsatisfactory effects.
I now refuse to believe certain people when they say they are non-affirming. If I can see powerful family and community forces in the structure of their lives, it seems to me reasonable to suppose that they have effects. Obviously in one sense they *are* non-affirming: they refuse to affirm. But it seems to me reasonable to work on countering the forces more than the person.
Living in Love and Faith may concentrate dangerous and damaging forces in a way that distorts the moral lives of Christians. This is of course directly in contradiction of its intention and its tone.
The damage will take a while to undo.
The chief form of repair will be to encourage forms of action which are non-adversarial.
This is very hard. So many of our structures are adversarial because our social histories are so adversarial: in education (the 'defence'), in law ('prosecution and defence'), in sport (the 'attack and defence'), in news media (the interview), in debate (two sides), and so on. It's relentless.
For the philosophers among us this is guided more deeply by binary patterns of thought and two-factor logics. These are perfectly normal and healthy under certain conditions. But they can become toxic when a generous approach to difference is required.
For those in anguish at this episcopal result, these reflections are not obviously encouraging. I'm basically saying: it appears worse than it is.
But this is increasingly the form which hope takes for me. It is tempting to be clever and say that LLF is too much living and not enough love and faith.
But I want to say this:
Do not allow others to persuade you that all is lost.
Do not believe people who tell you that evil has triumphed.
Refuse to listen to those who say we are adversaries.
We do have adversaries and we have a moral duty to stop them.
But the number of adversaries is fewer than we might suppose.
Those who are not divided can resist division.
If we are not divided, we remain difficult to conquer.
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