Sermon preached last Sunday in Southwell Minster about the Archbishop's Reflections on GC

Jeremy Pemberton preached about the Archbishop of Canterbury's Reflection on General Convention in Southwell Minster last Sunday morning. He says that he has never had such a deluge of positive comment after a sermon in all his years as a priest. The comments came from members of the mostly fairly elderly Minster congregation - comments like: at last, thank you for saying what we needed to hear. The sermon is reproduced below.

Jeremy Pemberton has been a priest since 1981 and has worked in the north of England, DR Congo and Cambridgeshire. He was an honorary canon of Ely Cathedral and is a canon of Boga Cathedral. Divorced, he has five children, and now lives and works in Nottinghamshire as a community healthcare chaplain and a lay clerk at Southwell Minster.

The Revd Paul Butler who sent a letter of support to the launch of FCAUK is soon to become the next bishop of Southwell and Nottingham.

Southwell Minster
Sunday 2nd August 2009, Trinity 8
10.30am Eucharist

Epistle: Ephesians 4:1-16
Gospel: John 6:24-35

I want to try and do, as Paul put it in our epistle, a little bit of speaking the truth in love this morning. I want to talk about sex and unity.

There – I thought that might get your attention! The reason I want to is that this epistle is a great call to the Church to live out her vocation in unity – and we live in a Church that is dangerously riven by disagreements. Paul is calling the Ephesians to living a worthy Christian life together – and the means to enable that are the unity of the Christian community and its generous sharing of the gifts it has been given by God. It is a wonderful picture of mutuality and generosity and of many being built up – an image of a rich diversity creating something true and beautiful for God. The church’s unity is to be preserved by humility, forbearance, gentleness, patience and love. Her strength will be shown by her ability to face and speak the truth as together her members grow up into Christ, the source and goal of her life.

Now that may be a vision rather than ever having been a reality. But what a contrast with the Church of England today! I don’t know how well you have been following the controversies of the past six or so years. They have all ostensibly been about the rights and wrongs of homosexual relationships, and particularly those of clergy. Two events triggered the present disagreements, which threaten the unity of not only the Anglican Communion, but to a certain extent the Church of England itself. In 2003 Dr Jeffrey John, then Canon Chancellor of Southwark Cathedral was nominated to the see of Reading – one of the suffragan bishops of Oxford Diocese. He was a gay man with a partner, with whom he now said he was in a celibate relationship. Storms of protest from prominent conservative clerics and laypeople focused on the facts that he was still in that relationship, did not repent of having had a sexually active one, and had written in support of permanent, faithful and stable gay partnerships. He withdrew his acceptance of the nomination – and is now Dean of St Alban’s Abbey.

In the USA, the voters of New Hampshire Diocese of the Episcopal Church elected as their bishop Canon Gene Robinson, a divorced father of two, who was now in a long-standing partnership with another man. The election of bishops in the Episcopal Church has to be confirmed by the other bishops giving their consent. In this case these consents were forthcoming – not least because the other bishops could not see any way in which the electoral process has not been followed scrupulously, and Canon Robinson was, as you know, consecrated.

There has been a huge international uproar over this – with conservatives from TEC joining with Primates from Africa, the Southern Cone, and East Asia, to condemn this action. Conferences and declarations in the intervening years have meant that the unity that Paul talks about in our letter is no longer a reality in the Anglican Communion, and as time goes on the divisions widen. In the US, a new ACNA has been founded by former Episcopalians – and they say that they are the true Anglicans and that TEC should be expelled from the Communion. A group holding similar views in England, the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, has been founded, to which our new diocesan bishop has given his support. But before I say any more about all this I want to say that I don’t think the Church of England does sex in general very well.

We live in a world where widespread virginity before marriage is a fairly distant memory – even for most Christian young people. Contraception, not least the pill, changed social attitudes for ever. Fear, a great motivator to chastity, has been removed. Lots of young people get married these days in their late twenties and early thirties, and most have had one or more quite long-term sexually active relationships before they met the person they now intend to marry. I can’t honestly remember the last time I saw a marriage application with two genuinely different addresses on the form. For many others, marriage seems an irrelevance and they never bother. Young and very young people are active in sexual relationships and as a consequence Nottingham, for example, has one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Europe. Across this spectrum of sexual activity there is everything from the extremely casual to the entirely serious.

And what has the Church of England to say? Nothing but: get married! No one bothers much talking about living in sin any more – indeed, only last week a new liturgy was published (with some conservative grumblings) for a Wedding with the simultaneous Baptism of the couple’s children. That is certainly not criticising the fornication of the couple, even if is only a sideways on way of approving it.

Paul, writing to the Ephesians, places great emphasis on the ethical actions he wants the Ephesians to demonstrate: being loving, forbearing, and exercising humility and gentleness. Isn’t it time that we rethought our sexual ethics so that we placed a greater emphasis on the quality of the actions that people engage in and take some of the focus off the formal state they inhabit? In that way we encourage people towards responsibility, permanence, fidelity, even if they are not ready to marry yet, and away from exploitative and careless sexual behaviour. Don’t get me wrong – I am not wanting in any way to undermine marriage, which is undeniably a foundational structure for our society, and the best place for raising children. But if we can’t produce a more modulated sexual ethics, then we have nothing to say that will help lead young people towards marriage, and towards mature and generous and loving and forbearing sexual lives. Like the old anti-drugs campaign – Just Say No – just saying no to sex simply doesn’t work.

Again, what are we to say about the attitude of the Church towards homosexuality? There is no doubt that society has undergone a huge revolution in attitude towards this relatively small minority of the population. Since 1997 we have seen the repeal of Clause 28 banning the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools; the progressive equalisation of the age of consent; a raft of equality legislation which has made discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation illegal (with a few exemptions, including a religious one); and then in December 2005 the beginning of Civil Partnerships – a legal framework for gay and lesbian people which has almost all the rights and responsibilities of heterosexual marriage, and incidentally a measure against which our former diocesan bishop voted.

There has been a sea change in social attitudes as well. Gay people are more visible in the media, at work and so forth. No one has to like or approve of anyone else, but there is a general expectation of toleration of gay people that works itself out in our common life. It is much easier for men and women to acknowledge their sexual orientation to themselves and others as hostility and stigma have been removed. Of course, there is still a risk that some homosexuals will be assaulted and even killed simply for their sexual orientation, but that is thankfully becoming rarer. It is almost impossible to imagine that the Prime Minister’s wife would have marched in the London Gay Pride parade fifteen years ago, but it happened this year.

The church, meanwhile, is tearing itself apart over this very issue. The last substantial piece of teaching was eighteen years ago in 1991. The House of Bishops statement Issues in Human Sexuality said –

that what it called 'homophile' orientation and activity could not be endorsed by the Church. “…Heterosexuality and homosexuality are not equally congruous with the observed order of creation or with the insights of revelation as the Church engages with these in the light of her pastoral ministry.”

Nearly a generation on from that guidance the observed order of creation has revealed hundreds of species where a number of the creatures can and do regularly form homosexual partnerships. There is so little in Scripture about this whole area that enormous tomes have to written to uphold an interpretation of no more than six odd verses scattered about the Bible that would ban homosexual relationships entirely.

But society has moved on – and the walls have not fallen to the barbarians. Loving, committed homosexual partnerships (some of them formalised) are now more visibly all around us. Conservative theologians make great play of the promiscuity and fragility and shallowness of homosexual life, but, as with heterosexuality, it does not have to be, and in many cases, is not like this. And the worst of heterosexual behaviour and the worst of homosexual behaviour are rather worryingly similar. Is it not time to recognise the ethical goods that are evident in the best of these relationships – in the fidelity, mutual support, community engagement, hospitality and so forth that we can see in homosexual partnerships as in heterosexual? Are these things unblessed?

Moreover, the Church of England has managed to think and talk its way through to a new perspective over a question of sexual ethics, while maintaining its unity. That is precisely what we have done over the question of divorce.

When I was a young man there were no divorced clergy or bishops, divorced people could be and were refused the Holy Communion, and there was no thought that divorced people could be remarried in church. Marriage was once, for life, and any deviation from that standard was thought to threaten the whole institution. It is certainly the case that there is apparently substantial Scriptural backing for that position – where Jesus says that anyone divorcing, except under very prescribed circumstances, is committing adultery.

Very slowly and painfully, and with great attention to the pastoral difficulties that this policy was creating in a society with significant numbers of divorced people not only on the streets but also in the pews, the Church has revised its understanding of marriage, divorce and remarriage. There are now hardly any voices to be heard to say that the new policy is unbiblical and sinful, and quietly, up and down the land, divorced people are marrying for the second time in church. We have among us divorced and remarried bishops and clergy. So the transition, the revision of our sexual ethics, in a way that honours the Lord of the Scriptures and also the society in which we are asked to exercise our ministry and mission, can be done, and unity and charity in the church can be maintained.

Paul wanted an extraordinary quality of relationship – a unity that transcended their differences – to characterise the way the Christians of Ephesus grew together. No one is imagining, certainly not him, that this was easy. Forbearance is one of the qualities he singles out to achieve this, and humility and gentleness. We face a world of sexual living that is very very different to the world of fifty years ago. I wonder if it would be possible for the church to find a way to speak differently into this world and encourage the qualities of living that will lead people, heterosexual and homosexual alike, towards the fullness of life that God wants for them. But that is, perhaps, only possible if we exercise a forbearance, a gentleness and a humility that so far the official pronouncements of our church have been unable to get anywhere near.

Jesus said, in everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets. Matt 7:12

May God give us grace to exercise gentleness and forbearance, and to welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us. Amen.

Changing Attitude response to Communion, Covenant and our Anglican Future

The Church of England

The Church of England is already a church which incorporates the ministry of partnered lesbian and gay lay people, priests and bishops. Hundreds of LGBT people in the ordained ministry, including the episcopate, act in a representative role in apparent contravention of the Church's teaching.

The majority of bishops, priests and lay people in the Church of England have not waited for the Church Catholic or the Anglican Communion to formally recognise the blessing of same-sex unions. Many Anglicans in every order of ministry have contracted Civil Partnerships and live in union with their same-sex partner. They have an appropriate representative function in a Church whose public teaching is at odds with the culture of British society and the majority of people in our congregations.

Changing Attitude is campaigning for honesty about the recognition of same-sex unions by allowing couples to receive, in public, the blessing of the church that is equivalent to Christian marriage.

Changing Attitude is campaigning for the General Synod of the Church of England to change its official position based on the report ‘Issues in Human Sexuality’ to affirm that partnered lesbian and gay people can be ordained and lifelong couples can have their relationships blessed openly and publicly in church.

The Anglican Communion

We call on the Anglican Communion to formally repent its failure to oppose prejudice against LGBT people.

We call on the Anglican Communion to formally recognise the human dignity, civil liberties and place within the Body of Christ of LGBT people. The two-track model proposed by the Archbishop of Canterbury formalises structural homophobia in the intensified relationships of the 'covenanted' Anglican global body.

Painstaking biblical exegesis rooted in solid theological grounding for the blessing of same-sex unions has been undertaken. The result of this work is disputed and has not yet received wide acceptance within the Communion, but the work has been done and is publicly available.

Theologians in Europe, North America and elsewhere have been offering their responses to the question of same-sex relationships and the need for a change in practice and discipline in the light of new facts and contexts for over 30 years.

Formal approval by the Church Catholic, the Anglican Communion and our ecumenical partners of the holiness of same-sex relationships will take many years but will eventually reach the necessary strong level of consensus. Formal approval by the Church Catholic would require an Ecumenical Council.

The Archbishop of Canterbury rightly states that unexamined prejudice and violence perpetrated against LGBT people is sinful and disgraceful. The Provinces of the Anglican Communion which support harsh laws which sanction intolerance and prejudice against LGBT are guilty of sin.

The Church is imprisoned in a global cultural environment which views homosexuality as sinful and contrary to nature. This view began to change in the C19th and evolved rapidly in the west after the Second World War. Further cultural change followed the Stonewall riots of 1969 and the development of gay liberation movements which began to reveal what had until then been invisible to the majority.

LGBT people are present in every culture and society despite conservative or hostile social and cultural attitudes. We are equally present in Nigeria, the Philippines and Argentina as in the USA and England. Changing Attitude believes the church at the level of the local congregation, diocese and Province is called to be prophetic and counter-cultural.

New developments in teaching and doctrine about the place of LGBT in the church have emerged in different parts of the Anglican Communion. Bishops and Provinces have responded according to local circumstance. Local churches are not becoming isolated or imprisoned in their own cultural environments but are responding to a movement of the Holy Spirit.

One day the global church will come to a wider corporate discernment which will recognise the sinfulness of past attitudes and recognise that God’s creation includes people with same-sex as well as opposite sex attraction.

LGBT Christians have not waited for the church to change its attitude and neither should Provinces where LGBT people are visible and active in the church. We will continue to create loving, holy, faithful relationships which have the same dignity as marriage. We wait impatiently for the global church to catch up with us. The danger for the mission of the church to all people and to LGBT people specifically is not the risk of responding to local pressure but to ignorance and prejudice.

We are LGBT Anglicans. Our membership of the Communion is an important part of our identity. Our Anglican Christian ethos holds us in a global fellowship of believers in which levels of diversity are high. The risks of centralisation and authoritarianism are not simply worrying but frightening for us. The rhetoric from some Provinces makes the Church a dangerous place for LGBT people. Intolerance and prejudice are sanctioned and encouraged by some bishops and Primates.

Mutual respect for the integrity of each province must be balanced by respect for the Christian faith and integrity of LGBT Anglicans and those who support our full inclusion in the Church.

The Covenant and two ecclesial realities

The Archbishop considers the possibility of a twofold ecclesial reality in view in the middle distance, a ‘two track’ model, two ways of witnessing to the Anglican heritage. On one track would be a 'covenanted' Anglican global body, sharing a vision of how the Church should be and behave and therefore able to take part as a body in ecumenical and interfaith dialogue. On the second track would be Provinces which had decided that local autonomy had to be the prevailing value and so had declined a covenantal structure. These Provinces would be related to this body, but in less formal ways with fewer formal expectations, there may be associated local churches in various kinds of mutual partnership and solidarity with one another and with the first track, 'covenanted' provinces.

Any Province which opts to accept the ministry of partnered lesbian and gay people and bless same-sex relationships would be excluded from the covenanted Anglican global body and would thus fall into the second track and be excluded.

Changing Attitude’s desire to be part of a Church of England which models greater integrity and consistency and our campaign for the full inclusion of LGBT people means we will never accept the possibility that in a two track Communion, the Church of England could sign a Covenant which compromises our full inclusion.

We are committed to co-operation in mission and service and oppose any competitive hostility between parts of the Church. We are also working for the best kinds of shared networks and institutions of common interest that could be maintained.

We hope that this period in the Communion’s life might genuinely be the beginning of a new era of mission and spiritual growth. It must includen all who value the Anglican name and heritage and are committed to listen openly and speak truthfully. It must not be a tactic to delay the full inclusion of LGBT people which will eventually become an issue in every Province.

The Archbishop of Canterbury highlights the risk of a church becoming unrecognisable to other local churches, rendering it strange to Christian sisters and brothers across the globe. For Changing Attitude supporters, a Church which is able to recognise partnered lesbian, gay and bisexual priests is more fully Anglican.

Archbishop's Reflections impossible for Changing Attitude supporters to accept

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s reflections on the Episcopal Church's 2009 General Convention are going to satisfy very few, if any, people. Perhaps that’s the intention.

Conservatives posting on Stand Firm think this is just a form of words to ‘suggest’ TEC is little bit ‘hasty but not wrong while the rest of the communion is just slow and dumb. Conservatives think +Rowan Williams and +Katherine Jefferts Shori are allies. The Archbishop is judged to be not orthodox but 100% liberal to his core and in grave theological and moral error throughout, determined to keep TEC in the family, no matter what, and willing to redefine the Anglican Communion in order to do so.

On Thinking Anglicans Fr Mark, a partnered gay priest, comments that he was:

“brought up in a Church of England which has all my life surrounded me with partnered gay priests and laypeople. I find this really horribly and personally offensive in its degree of failure to recognise the lived reality of members of the Church of England. According to this statement, no-one living in a same-sex relationship can ‘have a representative function’ in the Church. That means farewell to partnered gay singers, organists, teachers in church schools, as well as clergy in civil partnerships.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury says: “ … no Anglican has any business reinforcing prejudice against LGBT people, questioning their human dignity and civil liberties or their place within the Body of Christ.” We in CA agree with that. The “particularly bitter and unpleasant atmosphere of the debate over sexuality, in which unexamined prejudice is still so much in evidence and accusations of bad faith and bigotry are so readily thrown around” which the Archbishop describes is bitter and prejudiced exactly because of the church’s traditional teaching about homosexuality.

He then recommends a course of action which does just that – reinforces prejudice and questions human dignity and our place in the Body of Christ. The Archbishop writes that it is hard to see how a partnered lesbian or gay person “can act in the necessarily representative role that the ordained ministry, especially the episcopate” requires because “a person living in such a union cannot without serious incongruity have a representative function in a Church whose public teaching is at odds with their lifestyle.”

That puts the Archbishop of Canterbury at odds not just with the supporters of Changing Attitude but with the majority of the bishops, priests and lay people of the Church of England. Members of our congregations no longer believe that the church can draw lines where it used to. The CofE I know has always ordained partnered lesbian and gay people. Bishops have turned a blind eye to the partners of lesbian and gay clergy. With the advent of Civil Partnerships the majority and priests and laity can see no reason why the church should not bless those unions and that is true even of FoCA and HTB churches. Couples are welcome by most congregations who see no reason why faithfully partnered people should not be ordained and minister to them.

If the process of accepting the Anglican Covenant, and the Covenant itself, is intended to impose the teaching of Lambeth 1.10 for the indefinite future then Changing Attitude is totally opposed to the Covenant. We will work with our partners in the church to ensure that the Church of England never adopts a Covenant designed to inhibit our full place in the church of God.

With our brothers and sisters in the USA and Canada, we refuse to accept the imposition of a moratorium on our place in the church. We are here now, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, single and partnered, lay and ordained. Our sexual identity is not malleable but as with every person, we hope to mature with age.
We are not leaving the church, not denying our orders, not abandoning the love and intimacy of our partners to whom we remain more faithful than the church is faithful to us.

One trustee of Changing Attitude identified three things in the Reflections that make life impossible for LGBT Anglicans:

1. Does the Archbishop really and truly expect LGBT Anglicans living in 21st century western countries to wait a matter of decades until churches entrenched in deeply homophobic African cultures have come to terms with same-sex relationships before we are allowed to form relationships?

2. Does the Archbishop really expect those of us living in long-term relationships, whether the church recognises them or not, to break up with our partners and live solitary lives, even though there is nothing in our conscience or our own theology which would suggest it was a bad thing? Or is he happy for us to lead those 'lifestyles', as he puts it, as long as we keep them separate from our church and our God?

3. In paragraph 14 the Archbishop talks about a local church becoming 'isolated and imprisoned in its own cultural environment'. At the moment the Church of England is isolated and imprisoned from her own cultural environment. We are being expected to cling onto outdated and desperately damaging prejudices from our past, which impair and undermine our mission to our own society. What use is a church which is 'in communion' with churches overseas, but is a laughing stock and a peddler of bigotry within its own constituency?

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?

A Nigerian priest condemns the Church of Nigeria attitudes to homosexuality

A Nigerian priest has posted a comment on the blog written by Davis Mac-Iyalla about the service at Christ Church Beckenham at which Bishop Okohn preached. The priest writes:

“I'm a Nigerian Priest. The Church in Nigeria has lost her focus in Christian teachings. Condeming people because of their sexual orientation is evil and wickedness in the sight of God and man. International Organizations on Human Rights should rise against this injustices and act of wickedness on the people involved including those so called bishops that think they're God.”

Davis Mac-Iyalla, Director of Changing Attitude Nigeria, comments:

“I can understand why a Nigerian priest will post anonymously because revealing his identity will mean that he will lose his priesthood and be thrown out of the church. I can agree with him that the Church of Nigeria has lost her focus on Christian teaching because they are actively encouraging and supporting the Nigerian Government to pass a bill that will further suppress and punish LGBT Nigerians.

“We in Changing Attitude Nigeria have bishops and priests in the Church of Nigeria who have been actively but anonymously supporting us since we started in 2005. Changing Attitude Nigeria is working towards engaging more with the Church of Nigeria and continues to welcome priests and bishops who are willing to engage with us.”

The priest confirms what we know to be true, that despite to repeated assertions of Global South and GAFCON leaders, Global South churches are not monolithic in their attitude towards homosexuality. In a reversal of the usual Nigerian narrative, the priest has written in unusually forthright terms, describing the condemnation of people because of their sexual orientation as wickedness. Many Nigerian priests and lay people and some bishops totally disagree with the opposition of the church to her LGBT members.

He reveals a difference between Nigerian bishops and bishops in the UK and North America. Nigerian bishops and archbishops have a tendency to think of themselves as God-like in their power and authority. Archbishop Nwosu who confronted me so angrily and aggressively in Jamaica thought, even if only for that moment, that he has God-like authority to demand my camera. Many other Nigerians, gay and straight, describe the aloof, authoritarian style of Nigerian bishops.

It is hard for bishops from such a culture not only to accept homosexuality but to understand the relationship bishops in the UK and N America have with their priests and people. There is authority but it is more consensual. In the UK God-like obedience is rarely demanded and then only by bishops sharing un-Christ-like delusions of authority and power. In The Episcopal Church where bishops are elected, the relationship is even more consensual. Many in the Church of England find this degree of mutuality and accountability difficult to understand.

If the priest who posted the comment or other Nigerian priests with similar views would like to contact me in the strictest confidence I would be very happy to hear from you – colin@changingattitude.org.

Demonic attacks on LGBT people

Pinknews reports today that a number of fundamentalist Christian churches in Britain are thought to be performing 'exorcisms' on gays and lesbians to cure them of homosexuality - newsletter@pinknews.co.uk.

Their report is based on the Metro which says that a Pentecostal church in north-west London is using exorcism as a 'cure' for gay and lesbian people.

The Rev John Ogbe-Ogbeide who runs the United Pentecostal Ministry in Harrow says he carried out exorcisms on gays four or five times a year and that the procedure always worked. He said: "The evil spirits are telling you what's wrong is right, the opposite sex is not attractive." He cited a recent case where he exorcised a young man who was about to get married but was in love with a man. Rev Ogbe-Ogbeide added that the procedure could be carried out at any age, as demons could take hold of a person at any time.

Peterson Toscano who was invited by LGCM to perform at Lambeth, has been subjected to three exorcisms. He said: "The premise of these was that foreign demonic forces infiltrated my body and manipulated me so that I could not turn from being gay. I felt desperate for a cure especially after trying so hard to change through other means. This is a form of religious abuse and spiritual violence. I found the experienced traumatized me."

Meanwhile, I learnt from Giles Goddard that Anglican Mainstream has sent an email to members of General Synod and others to tell them that the Inclusive Church web address is an “attack website”.

The person responsible (or irresponsible) for the email is Canon Chris Sugden, member of General Synod and Executive Secretary of Anglican Mainstream International.

Chris was responding to an alert from an Anglican Mainstream supporter and tech specialist. In he email he says he really appreciated the supporter taking the time to write “and fill us in on how to respond to some disconcerting technological challenges. The link his computer found to be a known attack website was that of Inclusive Church.”

The Mainstream supporter says his computer security system classified a link to the Inclusive Church website in a news item posted today by Mainstream as a 'known attack website'. He said this meant that the website contained a malicious program designed to infect the PC when visiting. 'Attack' programs are designed to install programs that steal private information, use your computer to attack others, or for spying purposes.

A cautionary warning might have been sensible, with all this possible spying going on and demonic forces being manifested by gays in the church and computers being used to attack others - a frightening scenario indeed.

On the other hand, it would have been more sensible for Mainstream to have linked to the current, healthy, virus–free Inclusive Church URL: www.inclusivechurch2.net. It would have been even more sensible and Christian to have checked with Inclusive Church before sending an email to all members of General Synod telling them that Inclusive Church’s website is an attack website. This is how unhealthy demons and viruses designed to poison attitudes to LGBT people get spread in our church.

Stages of spiritual growth

I’ve been musing about the interplay between two events that happened yesterday. One was a conversation which took place over a Costa latte with a member of an HTB church plant. The other was a chance visit to the Anglo-catholic church in South London where I was baptised and confirmed. A dialogue between these two was inspired by reading a chapter this morning about stages of spiritual growth in ‘The God You Already Know’.

As I drove past the church of my childhood, I noticed that the chairs on which I first sat 58 years ago in Sunday School were being replaced by new upholstered chairs. Shock number one. Shock number two – the new incumbent has reverted to using the high altar at major festivals and altar 30 yards away, raised 15 steps above the congregation, back to the people. I rebelled against this distanced relationship with the congregation 30 years ago. I prefer to worship in a congregation visibly gathered together around the altar.

The stages of spiritual growth chapter affirmed my present experience of being in the third, individual stage of development, where it is possible to be creative in handling paradox, complexity and ambiguity. My criteria for action and belief come from my intuitive, inner contemplative life and are not simply those inherited from church, society or family. I am also frequently frustrated by conservative theology, teaching and practice – use of distancing high altar on the one hand and the use of proof texts against LGBT people on the other. I can do adult and mature in some areas and revert to childish frustrations in others.

HTB churches seem to embody a duality which I fail to understand. The theology and teaching, biblically-based, seems to come from the first stage of spiritual growth, conformist mentality. Rules are important and the leaders take to themselves authority to tell others how to think and behave. Things are seen in black and white with little allowance for individual difference and independence of thought. How do otherwise mature, intelligent adults survive in this environment?

At the same time in many HTB and evangelical churches there is a freedom and openness of experience and expression in prayer and worship and enthusiasm and warm, loving friendships in the congregation, all of which are more characteristic of later stages of spiritual development. Many Church of England congregations would me more attractive and feel far more alive and might experience God more intimately if they had something of the HTB fervour and joy.

There are no individual wrongs here, no judgement - just people at different stages of spiritual growth. But I observe that HTP churches are run by leadership teams which exclude those not deemed to be kosher – gay men, for example – and impose their will unilaterally on the entire congregation who are not consulted. We are going to be a FoCA church and support ACNA, people are told.

Hierarchical, authoritarian leadership can be a problem in any congregation. The schismatic developments in the Anglican Communion are being driven by individuals operating from a first stage of spiritual growth mentality where control, order, orthodoxy and authority are paramount. This results in tragedy, not just for LGBT Christians but for those maturing into the second and third stages of spiritual growth.

It’s a tragedy also for the growth, mission and ministry of the universal church. The church is failing to provide resources which nourish people and give them confidence to trust the God they already know and follow their mature intuition, leaving behind childhood images of God and ways of praying and risking trust in the God whose creation is good and whose love is universal and infinite.