Anglican Mainstream, Greenbelt, OuterSpace and next – Spring Harvest

The Anglican Mainstream website has posted four reports connected with this year’s Greenbelt Festival. The first is a letter to the Church of England Newspaper from Andrew Presland, General Synod member for the Diocese of Peterborough. He complains that the Greenbelt tradition of only including speakers who seek to explain away the traditional Biblical teaching on homosexuality continued for another year.

The next two are links to information about OuterSpace, the first posted on Greenbelt’s website before the Festival took place.

The most recent is a lengthy anonymous eye witness report from someone present at Greenbelt. The eye witness says one thing he (I’m assuming the person is male) saw that he hadn’t seen before at Greenbelt was overt physical affection between homosexuals in the beer tent. What he thought odd about this was the unnecessary nature of it. He was enjoying a beer with his friends at about 3pm, the place was half empty and “It was almost as if they were daring someone to make a scene, Of course no-one did and they were ignored, but it highlighted a difficulty that Greenbelt is going to face.”

Anglican Mainstream is determined to reinforce the message that Greenbelt has abandoned its early evangelical origins and is now a liberal festival entirely committed to a pro-gay stance.

From Changing Attitude’s perspective, that has to be a good thing. Our networks include evangelical LGBT people for whom there is no incompatibility in being gay and Christian (and partnered). Greenbelt still attracts many evangelicals, who are more open-minded about human sexuality than their conservative elders.

Mainstream is disturbed by developments at Greenbelt and conducted an ineffective campaign to intimidate the organisers and sponsors into providing a “balanced” view on homosexuality by inviting leaders of the ex-gay movement to speak.

I understand that Spring Harvest, a festival about which Anglican Mainstream might more confidently expect to toe the conservative evangelical line, polled participants to find out which issues that they hadn’t dealt with were of most concern to them. Top of the list was human sexuality/homosexuality. As a result next year’s programme will address the issue. Andrew Marin, whom I met on Thursday and about whose book I enthused, is speaking at all the Spring Harvest venues.

As we know, whenever LGBT people and issues are engaged with, prejudices and fears tend to give way to a recognition that we are no different from anyone else. Hence the opposition to Bishop Gene speaking at Greenbelt and the Listening Process in general. Many Provinces refuse to contemplate any listening to LGBT people, despite the commitment made in the otherwise binding Lambeth 1.10.

I predict that Anglican Mainstream will attack Spring Harvest next year for daring to put homosexuality on the agenda and inviting Andrew Marin to speak.

Greenbelt 2009: In the long now

Greenbelt's theme this year is 'In the long now'. It relates to a legend about the 14th century founders of New College Oxford:

They built the dining hall with a series of huge oak beams. 500 years later when the beams needed replacing they sought to find out if there were any oak trees on their land which might do the job. 'Ah...' said one of the tenants who farmed the land, 'we wondered when you'd be in touch'. It turned out the farmers had a tradition that back in the 14th century, a new grove of oaks had been planted to make up for those being cut down to provide the dining hall beams. The story was passed through the generations, and the oaks were protected, set aside for New College.

In an age of 'do it now' and the instant decision, when waiting times are always coming down, and the destination always trumps the journey, the idea of the 'long

now' is deeply resonant for people of faith.

To plan for a present we may never experience, to long for a world we may have left before it arrives. What would it be like if gratification was not instant, and the waiting had not been taken out of the wanting?

These words are hugely relevant to LGBT people right now. It goes without saying that those of us who are able to be out with integrity in our families, workplaces and churches today owe a massive debt of gratitude to those who had the resilience and courage to step out and be who they were, despite the often dire consequences for them personally.

But it also has huge resonance for the situation in the Anglican church today. When ++Rowan spoke out a few weeks ago, it felt like a huge slap in the face for many of us. How could we be expected to abandon our partners and put our vocations on hold for ten, twenty years or more whilst we waited for the rest of the church to come to terms with our reality? At a time when even Spring Harvest were starting to engage in dialogue with LGBT people, and recognise the validity of our lives, families and faith, it felt extraordinary that the Church of England was proving so intransigent. Some of us even talked about giving up and leaving.

In Jeff Heskins' second seminar today, about the issues faced by LGBT people who felt a vocation to enter church leadership, we heard from three people who had been told to not mention their sexuality in the selection process, and given tips to avoid having to answer direct questions about it. All three of them felt that they could not do that. Their calling was linked to who they were as LGBT Christians, and they could not work within the church without their integrity. They are all seeking ways of living out their vocation outside the Church of England.

'The long now' reminded me why we carry on fighting. It might not be for our vocations and our partnerships, or those of our contemporaries. It might simply be that we are fighting for a church where our LGBT children and grandchildren can live with integrity. And that's worth fighting for.

In the meantime, we will mourn the vocations which have been trashed. We'll mourn the LGBT people who have been forced out, and made to carry out their journeys of faith outside the church. And we'll apologise to their friends and families who have been left to wonder how the church has managed to reduce 2000 years of Christianity to a message about the wrongness of LGBT people.

Greenbelt 2009: On being unremarkable

Day two of Greenbelt, and we've just run a seminar led by Jeff Heskins about the issues surrounding same-sex couples seeking civil partnership blessings in church. As many will already know, Jeff has written a book about his experiences developing a liturgy for same-sex couples at his church in Charlton, South-East London, which you can buy here.

One of the main things Jeff wanted to emphasise about his ministry was simply how unremarkable he felt it had been. His contention was that much of the fuss in the church over same-sex couples stems from the fact that many within the church like to keep gay people at a distance. Taking their interpretation of Romans 1 as their understanding of what gay people must be like, they cling to a belief that LGBT people lead extraordinary, godless, hedonistic lives which pose a threat to families, children and the very fabric of society. His contention was that once they realised that we're just like everyone else, spending Saturday mornings buying flatpack furniture in Ikea and arguing with our children in Sainsburys, then they'd realise there's not much to get in a fuss about.

Some years ago, Libby Purves wrote in the Times talking about the fact that so often middle-class parents react with panic and fear upon discovering their son is gay, only to wonder what they were worried about when he comes home from university six months later with a quietly spoken cellist.

Similarly, when Bishop Gene took to the stage for the first time at Greenbelt yesterday, you would wonder what all the fuss was about. Instead of the highly alternative, wacky and generally 'out-there' liberal campaigner many were expecting, there was a rather conservative man talking in a very gentle and articulate way about faith, God and the Bible.

Some would like to caricature LGBT folks as godless, sex-obsessed libertines intent on undermining the church.

But as Larry King put it when interviewing Bishop Gene

'once they realise you're as boring as we are, it's all over'.

Or as a gay friend of a friend once put it,

'don't they realise we're about as much threat to the fabric of society as Viennetta'.

Greenbelt 2009: First post

Well good evening,

This will be the first of several posts from the Greenbelt festival in Cheltenham.  Several of us at Changing Attitude will be blogging the latest goings on over the weekend, assuming the combination of camping, rain, mud and laptops does not cause IT meltdown.

On top of my involvement in Changing Attitude, I'm personally also involved in OuterSpace, which is just one of the LGBT groups involved in providing LGBT-focused content at Greenbelt, and creating a space where LGBT Christians can get together and have fellowship.  

When OuterSpace started working with Greenbelt at 2007, we were really interested in taking a different tack to many of the seminars on LGBT issues many of us had attended previously at Greenbelt and other Christian festivals.   This is how we described what we were trying to achieve, which in many ways also echoes the approach of Changing Attitude:

OuterSpace is committed to the church and to helping everyone find their way in the church, no matter what their background.

We try to look beyond the dry intellectual debates that surround the whole area of gender and sexual orientation, and to focus instead on hearing the stories of real people’s faith, in order to understand the different journeys that LGBT Christians are on.

It is by humanising the debates, by sharing experiences and by engaging in constructive dialogue that the church, in all its forms, can begin to reflect the reality of the world around it, and start to make a positive difference in people's lives – both within and outside the church.

Each year at Greenbelt, OuterSpace will outwork this belief by hosting speakers, discussions, times of reflection and times of fellowship - all with the aim of supporting LGBT Christians on their journeys of faith, and helping all churches to understand what it means to have LGBT people as part of their communities.

It was in some ways amusing, in other ways rather disturbing to see our words quoted on the Anglican Mainstream blog earlier this year as evidence of the 'gayification' of UK evangelicalism.  Needless to say, nobody gets 'gayified' at Greenbelt (whatever that means) unless being 'gayified' means opening your mind to the possibility that LGBT people are often well-balanced individuals with a genuine faith.   My goodness, what a dangerous liberal idea..

One of the most valuable things we've done as part of OuterSpace, and which we'll be doing again this year, is our stall in the Greenbelt resource centre.  There we've heard all kinds of stories from all kinds of people.  Young people who have been forced to leave churches, parents of LGBT people who have fallen out with longstanding Christian friends over it, vicars and pastors looking to understand how they can reach out to LGBT people in their own congregations and communities.   

It's sad that even in 2009, often the only perspective on LGBT people you'll hear at Spring Harvest or New Wine is one which either denies the existence of LGBT people, or caricatures us as deluded, confused, or worse.  (It goes without saying that this flies in the face of the vast majority of professional opinion, not to mention the reality of so many healthy happy LGBT people in the UK.)  However loving the intention of such groups, the effect is in so many cases simply to drive people away from the church, and even away from God.  

That's why we are so grateful to Greenbelt for allowing us the opportunity to suggest to LGBT people on the brink of leaving church that there IS another way, and that there is good news in the church for LGBT people.

On the cusp of another Greenbelt, we're looking forward to being able to report back positive stories of LGBT Christians getting on with their lives, and doing great things for God, their churches, families and communities.

And if you're coming along, or just are interested to see what we'll be up to this year, please do check out the OuterSpace website:

www.outerspacelgbt.org.uk

Bye for now - I'm off to track down my waterproof trousers...

Alex

LGBT Voices at Greenbelt

As one of the organisers of OuterSpace, one of the organisations which is providing LGBT content at Greenbelt this year, I'm a bit baffled as to why Lisa Nolland is so incensed by the fact that Greenbelt permits our involvement in the festival.

I'm also an evangelical, and core to my faith is the belief that salvation comes through Jesus Christ.  As far as I'm aware, it doesn't come through holding a particular position on homosexuality, although from the way Lisa talks, you might think that it did.

Of course I also believe that scripture is instructive and authoritative for Christians.  But on lots of issues, including divorce, the flatness of the earth, women in ministry, evolution, contraception, polygamy and the rightness of slavery, the Bible has appeared to point in a different direction to what most evangelical churches in the UK would now believe.  Findings from science and personal experience have rightly always affected and qualified how evangelicals interpret scripture.

This doesn't of course mean that people who would argue for a revision on the acceptability of gay relationships, on this token alone, are necessarily right.

But it does mean that even evangelicals need to look at the new evidence prayerfully, sensitively and intelligently, and listen to the experience of gay Christians and of secular experts in the field, before coming to any hard and fast conclusions either way. 

The reality is that even in the USA, the only Western country where there is any significant ex-gay movement, the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association and the American Psychoanalytical Association all believe that homosexuality should not be treated as a mental disorder, and that human sexuality cannot be changed using reparative therapy.  What's more, the evidence from the world around us is that lots of gay and lesbian people are leading long-term, mutually fulfilling relationships.  (Lots of gay people aren't, as Lisa noted from the recent Pride events, but nor are lots of straight people.)

I can understand why Lisa Nolland's understanding of the Bible may lead her to a place where she believes that gay relationships are unacceptable.  However, what I can't understand is how she can be so certain of that, so certain that she would not even allow LGBT people to have a voice in any Christian context. 

At Changing Attitude, and in OuterSpace's sessions at Greenbelt, we do not seek to silence the voice of ex-gay experience, and we welcome public debate.  We are all Christians, and all part of the Body of Christ, and therefore our intention is not to vilify or caricature those who would disagree with us.   Rather we seek to provide opportunities for LGBT Christians to explore how to live out their faith and their sexuality or gender identity in a constructive and spiritually healthy way.  Some may indeed come to the conclusion that an ex-gay movement might be the appropriate way forward.  We're simply keen people make that decision from a place of knowledge, rather than ignorance.

If the Bible is as clear as Lisa Nolland makes it out to be, and the claims of the ex-gay movement are as convincing as she would have us believe, then surely there is nothing to fear in allowing people to hear the other side of the argument, and make up their own minds?

Why does Anglican Mainstream continue to attack Greenbelt?

Why does Anglican Mainstream think it has the right to attack Greenbelt and accuse it of being one-sided and post-orthodox Christian? It’s because Anglican Mainstream and allies think that they alone are orthodox and hold the true faith. Anglican Mainstream’s self-identity is arrogant and abusive. They are right and any group which welcomes LGBT people in any way is wrong. It doesn’t matter whether LGBT people are single and celibate and conform to the teaching of the church. As Phelim comments on the previous post, gay identity is false identity for Mainstream.

As Anglican Mainstream continues its campaign of attack against Greenbelt I thought I’d take a look at the website to see how Greenbelt understands itself. http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/about/

Greenbelt’s mission statement describes it as “an independent Christian charity working to express love, creativity and justice in the arts and contemporary culture in the light of the Christian gospel.”

The web site says it was “a dream born on the unsettled non-conformist edges of the church during the early 1970s.” Greenbelt “was about a 24/7 faith, it was a theology with ‘no-splits’…”

It gained a reputation for introducing people to the UK church who came from places where the struggle for justice was more pressing than, say, ‘the baptism of the Holy Spirit’. Artists were invited because their vision overlapped with the biblical one of global justice or engaging with political powers or was simply fuelled by a divine sense of wonder.

Greenbelt has cemented its partnership with Christian Aid, translating debate about political engagement and international justice into vigorous campaigning. CMS, SPCK, USPG, YMCA, ICC and the Church Times have collaborated with this. They have helped Greenbelters re-imagine the church as an infectious global conspiracy, working for God’s peace, healing and friendship in previously unimagined ways. This is Greenbelt today.

Changing Attitude supporters and trustees are involved with Greenbelt. It is an event which is safe for LGBT people and which offers creative resources for our spiritual nourishment. Greenbelt inspires Christians who have a passion for justice. It brings together people from wildly diverse traditions and who experience God in a rainbow variety of ways.

Chris Sugden and Vinay Samuel attended and spoke at Greenbelt in the seventies and eighties. They now accuse Greenbelt of having become an indiscriminate market place with an ethos Greenbelt no longer consistent with the Christian gospel.

CMS, defending it’s involvement against the Mainstream attack, says Greenbelt is a brilliant platform from which to offer hospitality and share the gospel.

Greenbelt continues to offer thousands of people, many of them on the fringes of the church, an experience which encourages them in the faith and restores their confidence in God. Changing Attitude wouldn’t dream of trying to dictate what Greenbelt should be or who it should invite. It is what it is, and we rejoice in it’s openness, diversity and passion.

Greenbelt resonates with people’s experience of God in the UK in the 21st century far more than Anglican Mainstream will ever do. In attacking Greenbelt, Mainstream simply reveals more of its prejudices, offends more people, strengthens Changing Attitude’s resolve to work for justice and shows how marginal it is to the faith experiences of the majority in the UK.

Lies and poison from Anglican Mainstream

Lisa Severine Nolland has written a second article for Anglican Mainstream about the ‘gayification’ of Greenbelt.

Lisa returns to this ‘dreary’ topic, as she calls it, because Greenbelt hasn’t replied to her phone and email messages expressing concern about the presence of Bishop Gene Robinson, Paula Gooder, Robert Beckford, Giles Fraser and Dave Tomlinson, Journey MCC Birmingham and OuterSpace at Greenbelt and the showing of the film Priest.

Firstly, Lisa thinks expert, authoritative, orthodox, ex/post gay voices should be granted equal access, visibility and air time if those with an LGBT agenda are going to be handed the microphone. She says the decks have been stacked, disadvantaging the audience.

The problem with this argument for Anglican Mainstream is that leading figures such as Canon Chris Sugden and others not associated with Mainstream such as Peter Ould, and the experts from the USA that Mainstream import for their conferences don’t accept that there is any such thing as a gay identity. Gay people are heterosexuals who have been seduced and corrupted by secular culture and a bad relationship with their father. They can be returned to hetero-normativity by repentance, therapy and healing. If heterosexuality is normative and makes people happy, why is Lisa such an obsessively worried heterosexual?

The people who attend Greenbelt are intelligent, thoughtful Christians. They can choose which events to attend and use their God-given minds to assess whether what they hear is truthful to their experience of God’s creation. They are not stupid and vulnerable, as Lisa seems to imagine.

Secondly, Lisa’s knowledge of the history of marriage in the Christian and pre-Christian era is abysmal. She naively states that: ‘Over the millennia the Judaeo-Christian sexual ethic had insisted that sex remain within the context of mutually loving and giving, exclusive, until-death heterosexual marriage.’ Lisa has forgotten about polygamous relationships in the Old Testament, the inferior status of women in marriage until the modern era and the way in which the nature of marriage has constantly changed historically.

She next justifies divorce by referring to scripture. How dare she, when those in Mainstream quote proof texts at LGBT people. Jesus said definitive things about divorce. He said nothing about same-sex activity. I am not taking his silence to mean he approved. I take it that he saw no need to condemn men who had sex with men in the same way that he condemned divorce.

Lisa says sexual liberation, authenticity, exploration and autonomy are core parts of the LGBT agenda. I think she really means licentiousness and promiscuity. Some secular LGBT groups may advocate such a sexual ethic, as do many secular heterosexual groups. Changing Attitude emphatically does not. We advocate authenticity and the exploration of intimacy and love in fidelity to one partner for life.

Lisa asks whether Christian LGBT groups insist that their members keep all sexual relating within the perimeters of civil partnerships or gay ‘marriage’ (in countries where SSM is legal) and whether they insist that if one is not in such a relationship, then one must remain sexually chaste. She links to the Changing Attitude and Chicago Consultation web sites. Lisa, do heterosexual Christians follow your expectations? What does Anglican Mainstream’s research show – or is it only concerned with trying to expose the worst of LGBT experience? Is the dominant heterosexual culture setting an example of sexual restraint? No, it isn’t. We LGBT people may well be setting a better example and be more honest than those obsessed with sexual activity in Anglican Mainstream.

Lisa says it is LGBT culture that has set the trend and is profoundly influencing heterosexual culture. We are responsible for inspiring heterosexuals to abandon the ’no-sex-until-you-are-married-and-then-only-with your-spouse’ Christian ideal. Let’s blame the gays for all moral ills in society, shall we? Let’s make gays the scapegoats for the failure of idealised heterosexual Christian ethics. This is a scandalous argument for Lisa to make and verges on the evil of fascism – let’s scapegoat the Jews and the gays. There is indeed a loss of ethical values in our church. Falsely blaming a minority group provides one example.

Finally, Lisa believes that the LGBT agenda as articulated by such groups as Inclusive Church is either dissimulative or woefully ignorant and naive. Lisa introduces another of her pet obsessions at this point. She asks whether IC understands the full spectrum of what it is embracing and endorsing. What Lisa thinks IC and CA tacitly endorse are such ‘orientations’ as polyamory, sadomasochism, bondage and domination, zoophilia and paedophilia.

Reading Lisa’s false accusations makes me really angry. She claims the Christian moral high ground but repeatedly makes false claims and insinuations about Inclusive Church and Changing Attitude. Our Christian ethical position is utterly orthodox in reality. We believe in the highest ethical values for LGBT Christians. Let me answer Lisa’s final rhetorical question. No - individuals with these identities and corresponding lifestyles will not be encouraged to come out of their closets by IC or CA.

The people in local congregations that Changing Attitude engages with hate (and I mean, really hate) the way in which Anglican Mainstream repeatedly links zoophilia, paedophilia, etc with LGBT identity. Members of our church think Anglican Mainstream behaves in a way that is totally unfair and irresponsible.

In her third article on Greenbelt, Lisa Nolland asks whether Christian Aid, Church Urban Fund, YMCA or the Church Times would be happy to be associated with an event which had as one of its associates the BNP. Her argument sinks to the depths at this point, associating Christian LGBT groups with the tactics and beliefs of the BNP. She repeats the lie that LGBT advocacy groups will be present at Greenbelt. They will not. LGBT individuals will be present and so will groups ministering to LGBT people. Lisa’s argument is exclusive and fascist. She doesn’t think any group representing or ministering to LGBT people should be welcome at Greenbelt. If we let the gays in, she implies, we might as well let the BNP in. The idea is deeply offensive to Changing Attitude.

Anglican Mainstream is an organisation on the fringe of the Church of England, ready to jump ship if it doesn’t get its own way. It is allied with groups like ACNA and FCAUK which do have a schismatic agenda, unlike Changing Attitude. They claim The Episcopal Church is schismatic when in reality Mainstream is one of the groups actively planning schism.

Anglican Mainstream is dishonest, negative and plays to the very worst in the human psyche by attempting to poison people’s hearts and minds against LGBT people. They are doing incalculable damage to Christian witness and ministry in this country.