Updated to add St Ebbe’s article
Helen King The Observer Cover-up of child abuse in Church of England tried to ‘protect the work’ of twisted theology
Andrew Anthony The Observer The Church of England is beset by shame and division. Can it survive?
Gavin Drake Church Abuse Open letter to William Nye, Archbishops’ Council’s Secretary General
Adrian Thatcher Modern Church No Lessons Learned? Makin, Welby and Theology
Martine Oborne Women and the Church Our church will not be safe while spiritual abuse remains unchecked
Colin Coward Unadulterated Love Makin, substitutionary atonement and the distortion of homosexual desire
Bernard N Howard sixty guilders St Ebbe’s and the Smyth Scandal: An Inadequate Response
It is beyond doubt that the Church of England and its safeguarding work is beyond salvation. Yet even now, I suspect we will be treated to the grim spectacle of Cottrell announcing some scheme or proposal to bring to General Synod in February. His words are wasted, however. He does not seem to understand that there is not a word he can say on the subject that would be believed, have credibility or command any trust and confidence. The same goes for the NST and the NCI’s, and of course the Lead Safeguarding Bishop. They’ve all voted against independence in… Read more »
I think it will take a change of leadership, including the resignation of the Archbishop of York, a significant number of bishops and the Secretary General of the Archbishops’ COuncil, together with a massive change in culture before there can be any sort of trust. That will have to include genuine independence of safeguarding, ideally set up by parliament and funded by the state. Trust is going to be hard to come by when it has been eroded by a thousand cuts over so long.
We should call for personnel in Lambeth Palace and senior bishops to be removed from or withdraw from any involvement or responsibility in Church of England safeguarding, pending a fully independent and statutory inquiry into the coverups over abuse, expenditure on those coverups, and the systemic issues in governance that have led to such disgrace, public disgust and deep despair inside the church. It will be impossible for the CofE to recover public trust until then. If trust and confidence are to be restored in the its leaders and any of its safeguarding work, we must demand the following: 1. An immediate Statutory Independent Inquiry into the operations… Read more »
This crisis is of existential proportions raises huge questions about whether it is actually safe to be in this kind of episcopally-led church anymore. I think it isn’t now, and that’s becoming clearer to clergy and laity everywhere. I guess what I am interested in is being much clearer about what it is that clergy are leading. It is not an organisation, plainly. It is more like a family, or voluntary institution (e.g., local charity with volunteers). Clergy therefore have to be the exemplars of the values/virtues/practices of the family/institution (i.e., the ‘occupation’), as this is not a job, per se. Bishops,… Read more »
I am interested why you think episcopally-led churches are more dangerous than any other type?
Flat local systems of governance have less at stake, and no hierarchy to cover up scandals. Compare the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian), Methodists (Circuits), etc to the CofE. You are much safer in the former – accountability is local, and deference negligible.
I don’t think that Episcopal systems as such are the problem, it is more a question of the governance system used to appoint the bishops, and to hold them to account.
There may be great suspicion of bishops in the UK because of our experience of the Church of England’s governance systems, but our Canadian friends seem reasonably happy with their bishops who are elected locally, and where there is presumably some system of recall if things go wrong.
And there are plenty of scandals in small charismatic churches without a bishop.
Bishops in Canada are elected according to the canons of their ecclesiastical province, not the national church. I’m not familiar with the other three provinces but in the one in which I live (Northern Lights, formerly Rupert’s Land, covering Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the Arctic) there is no recall system. On the other hand, bishops’ stipends and expenses are the responsibility of their local diocese, so there is some sense of accountability there. Also, we don’t have the distraction of the House of Lords; bishops are largely marginalised from secular power and prestige.
We also elect our bishops in TEC. They go on a “walking tour” of the diocese and answer questions from clergy and laity alike. And clergy and laity are empowered to vote. Holding bishops accountable for misconduct continues to be an issue, but not nearly on the scale of CoE. I don’t believe we have provisions for recalling a bishop, either. After years of reading the articles and comments on TA, I long ago determined that the root of CoE’s problems is the CNC and their autocratic and seemingly ideologically driven methods of appointing bishops. It’s hard to think of… Read more »
I don’t think the CNC works in quite the way that you imply Cynthia. It contains a large minority (6 out of 14) members elected from the diocese in question. And its standing orders say that it must “pay due regard” both to the views of the diocesan members and the mission of the Church of England as a whole. My recollection of the Sheffield vacancy is that the diocesan reps, or at least a majority of them, were persuaded that Bishop North’s appointment was a good thing. That was a strange act by them (I’m trying to choose my… Read more »
Six representatives out of 14 members is insufficient, it should be more like 100 out of 100. In TEC, after a diocese has elected a bishop-elect, there’s another step where the larger church consents, or not. It can only withhold consent if something goes wrong in the process. There have been two instances in recent memory where the outgoing bishops took steps to get their preferred candidates elected, and the national church didn’t give consent. My recollection of Sheffield was that it is a diocese in a region that is extremely proud of its role in women’s suffrage and has… Read more »
I think part of the problem in Sheffield was that no one on the Vacancy-in-See Committee thought it important to specify that their next bishop should be someone who would ordain women. They could have explicitly said so, but they didn’t think t was necessary. Consequently at the CNC, others could argue that the diocese hadn’t said it was a requirement.
It was foolish of the ViSC to think that, but hopefully the lesson was learned by other dioceses. If something is important to you put it very clearly and explicitly in the diocesan statement.
The role of the Church of England is different from that of the Episcopal Church in the USA. The English Church, for better or worse, has a national role. It’s not entirely unreasonable for that national role and mission to be taken into account when choosing new diocesan bishops.
True. However, something is terribly broken when the CNC nominates bishops who are way out of step with the English people on women in leadership and marriage equality. The narrow, closed system clearly isn’t working when it comes to accountability. I would submit that the only way to right that ship is to have broader participation from the faithful people who are impacted by these selections.
And the gang of bishops seem spectacularly out of step with the British people (and their flock, more narrowly) on assisted dying too. Unless they have some theological guidance to offer (and I haven’t heard any, only the usual stuff about “slippery slopes” etc) they should keep quiet.
Your remarks accurately reflect my personal experience of the Diocese in Europe. The arrogance and lack of Christian love is staggering and personally wounding. I have escaped (online) to the Diocese of Monmouth. Cherry Vann the bishop most certainly knows what it is to be a bishop: leader, servant and inspiration. She understands kindness. Why is that so hard ? Is it beaten out of you at Eton Over and Over again I find Christian love in St. Woolas Cathedral. In that small part of Wales you feel the body of Christ but at the same time sense the terminal… Read more »
There’s nothing wrong with the mono-episcopal model if the bishops aren’t paid more than other clergy (removing the worldly model of success), if they are focussed on their core roles of mission/pastoral care in areas small enough (archdeaconries) for them to know the parishes (family units) and clergy (heads of families). The model provides for accountability in Synod and the College of Canons (tribal elders) who hold the memory and best practise of the larger family (another province in the midlands). I’m not saying this because I live in France but because I believe that the bishop/priest/deacon model is what… Read more »
Thanks Mark. I think there is a lot of wisdom here.
At the risk of repeating myself, in the very early church the bishops only supervised one geographically limited community, and were elected/appointed by the local community. This appears to match your advice.
It is only later, when the bishops began to appoint each other to oversee larger areas, that questions of governance and accountability became became more complex.
I don’t think the problem of dangerous theology (Oborne and Thatcher) is restricted to the Church of England, or even Anglicanism. Primary legislation is needed, maybe as an addition to the promised bill banning conversion therapy.
The sad truth is that abusers will always find a way to twist theology to justify their actions, no matter whether they are Roman Catholic priests, conservative evangelicals, or the likes of Chris Brain who embraced liberal/new age ‘creation spirituality’. It would probably be more effective to have primary legislation banning single sex boarding schools.
Meh. “Both/All Siding” this is FATALISM: “nothing can be done.”
There are some forms of theology/ecclesiology that are MORE LIKELY to abuse than others: those that are patriarchal, and keep secrets!
The Channel 4 interview yesterday with PJ, Smyth’s son – ‘Church abuse scandal: my Dad the abuser’ available on YouTube gives much to reflect on relevant to all the analysis above. It is a difficult watch and very moving.
Cathy Newman is to be commended for her years-long reporting of this story. The place Channel 4 News has played in this sorry saga shouldn’t be underestimated. Justin Welby’s interview with Ms Newman seems to have been the final catalyst for his resignation. I’m sure the CofE would have tried a business-as-usual approach if Ms Newman hadn’t kept a spotlight on the sordid affair.
Not quote opinion, but page eight of today’s Private Eye (issue 1637, 22 November to 5 Dec 2024) has that rarest of rare things, a signed column by Ian Hislop, written in the first person, recounting Welby’s happy appearance and forgiveness by all present at a British Museum event the day after his resignation. Alongside it, two columns list every cleric Hislop sees as culpable and provides short criticisms of each, noting in particular the forgetful.
It is an excoriating page. Of course, any cleric who feels that they have been unfairly traduced is welcome to sue.
I disagree with Ian Paul. Smyth’s ministry within the auspices of the Church of England facilitated his abuse, before he became a Reader and afterwards. It gave him status and access, it opened doors and networks. His abuse was a massive safeguarding failure and the Church bears responsibility given how many people within it knew and did nothing to stop him. The Church, like the Church in Ireland, is unlikely to fully recover the trust of the people it is called to serve. How anyone could imagine that the truth would not surface eventually is beyond me, but so many… Read more »
CofE hierarchy reactions in safeguarding seem to follow this pattern:
First, try to ignore, and, if that fails, prevaricate & delay as long as possible.
Next announce a review – delaying that as much as possible.
When review is finally published, declare that you are shocked beyond measure, very sorry (but it was not your fault), and valuable lessons have been learned.
As to implementing any of the recommendations of the review, delay & prevaricate as long as possible, then announce another review.
Repeat ad infinitum
Don’t forget to nerf the review by limiting it’s terms of reference so that it can’t discuss the real reasons for what happened…
If ++Stephen announced, in penitential tone, that the C of E is going to start work immediately to implement all the recommendations of the Jay Review without exception, would that not feel like real progress and begin to restore some trust? And of course it would have to be genuine, urgent, and actually happen.
No. It would not feel like progress. It is far too late for a penitential tone of voice to convince anybody.
I agree that a ‘penitential tone of voice’ would signal nothing. But that’s not what I said.
I am trying to consider what actually could happen in the real world in the next days or weeks that could give some hope of travelling in the right direction.
Some of the proposals of the reforms needed that I’ve read here and elsewhere (even if theoretically very sensible) could only realistically happen after such a fundamental review of church governance that it would need to take months if not years.
which is probably why it won’t happen…
But more seriously – it won’t happen because the nature of Bishop-positions means that he can’t announce things like that. There is a whole team of national safeguarders and local diocesean safeguarders and etc – that have to be convinced. He doesn’t have the power to tell them to do it.
He could write a letter, but maybe someone will post it on twitter and say they are being coerced into doing something.
Is it the case then that it is impossible for those in positions of leadership in the C of E to implement the recommendations of the Jay report and other reports?
If that’s the case it puts anger with ‘the leadership’ for Safeguarding failures in a very different light. I for one was not aware of that.
As I pray for the Church at a wide Ecumenical level, my own Roman Catholic Church of which I have been a member now for 20 years and my previous Church the Anglican Communion, both churches which have both had their history of Abuse in one form or another which have involved people of every state of life and Vocation and as I pray now especially for the Church of England in the light of the Makin Report and Justin Welby’s Resignation as Archbishop, It becomes clear to me that through all this the Lord is cleansing his Temple, his… Read more »
From Helen King’s excellent article in The Observer.
“One of the groups in the Alliance network, Living Out, has just released the Kaleidoscope course aimed at 11- to 18-year-olds, which tells them they will go to hell if they are gay. This is presented as the “loving” thing to do for young people, giving a chilling slant to the CEEC’s official safeguarding policy which talks about creating a “loving environment”. “
This is quite remarkable. Living Out has been presented as the very reasonable face of the Evangelical approach to human sexuality. Why is this even tolerated in the CifE?
Remarkably untrue. The presenters themselves are gay.
What is untrue in Andrew’s comment? The members of Living Out describe themselves as same sex attracted and not as gay.
This is 1984 all over again.
Some of their earlier videos made that distinction, but currently the tag line of their website is “Christian and gay”.
I don’t know anything about Helen King, but all I can say is that if she asserts that Living Out believe that these young people ‘will go to hell if they are gay’, what she says is simply untrue.
I went to a Living Out evening last week and the leaders are gay themselves.
Thanks Andrew. See my reply below.
I do know Helen and trust her absolutely and without question.
And I’m afraid I don’t trust ‘The Alliance’.
and trust her absolutely and without question
There is not a single person on earth I would trust absolutely and without question. Surely we are all fallen and sinners? Or, at least, we all have common sense and have seen something of the world?
Helen King may have been careless in her choice of words, but Living Out are definitely not in favour of calling oneself gay without heavy qualifications, they need a half-hour podcast to outline their position. Being surrounded by several, big conservative evangelical parishes, I’ve met several kids who found themselves at the receiving end of Living Out’s ‘beautiful biblical vision;’ all were very distraught by the fact that they found it quite unable to ‘repent’ of wanting to love and be loved and spend their lives with someone, which meant they were toast. So yes, I’d say that’s giving a… Read more »
Without wanting to agree or disagree with anybody on this thread it might be helpful to us all to think about the use of these labels. There are many different ways that people use labels like gay, or homosexual, or same-sex attracted. It can cause confusion if people use the same label for very different ways of thinking. How does one become homosexual, or when does one become gay? What is the difference between “homosexual”, “same sex attracted” and “gay”? Is there a difference? For example, does one become homosexual (or gay or whatever label you use) only when one… Read more »
“Same sex attracted” sounds like a pathology, and thus it is repugnant to many of us as objectifying. We don’t say “opposite sex attracted!” If people are called to celibacy, fine. Also, people are free to call themselves whatever they want, but “ssa” gives the impression that they are refraining from gay sex because they see something wrong with it. That would be internalized homophobia and it isn’t healthy. I know gay clergy who say that they are gay but celibate. The call to celibacy is separate from sexual orientation.
Thank you Cynthia, I am pretty much with you here.
Me three!
But do they affirm the blessedness of same-sex relationships (by the same standards of opposite-sex ones, that is, marital?) That’s the, um, rub. “Gay (but Forever-Celibate)” is a double-standard.
The article’s claim that Living Out has released a resource stating that people will ‘go to hell if they are gay’ is, on the face of it, absurd. I admit that I haven’t reviewed all the course resources to understand where this claim derives from; but Living Out accurately describes itself as ‘a charity run by Christians who experience same-sex attraction’ (http://bit.ly/4fDLzfA). The leadership of Living Out do not believe that they are going to hell. They do believe (in common with all conservative evangelicals) that the only way to be saved is to repent of one’s sin (the generic… Read more »
The leaders of a thing don’t actively think they themselves are going to hell? Well allow me to attempt my shocked face….
Seriously though, I think this does reveal that we have lost (did we ever have it?) a lot of nuance in discussions on sexuality and theology – and also lost the ability to assume the best in people.
This is the link to the resources if you want to find out what is being said for yourselves.
https://www.livingout.org/courses/kaleidoscope
Thanks Simon. What it says is this: “when you look at 1 Corinthians chapter 6, actually, that list there, it says these people are excluded from the kingdom of heaven. This is of serious importance. Actually I love LGBT people and I want as many LGBT people to be in heaven as possible and so we have to hold on to God’s teaching around sexuality and marriage and we have to share it so that people aren’t finding themselves on that list which is excluded from heaven”. Excluded from heaven presumably means they are going to hell. They are trying… Read more »
Excluded from heaven presumably means they are going to hell. Maybe some assumptions there? Did Paul explicitly mention heaven? Or hell? Paul mention homosexuality as one out of many sins. John Stott I thought was quite good on the issue. I also looked up a Martyn lloyd Jones sermon on this passage – he emphasised the list of sins as being symptoms of a deeper issue. If all greedy people end up in hell, there won;t be many in heaven. It somehow sickens me when we discuss heaven and hell, as if we knew anything. Presumptious. Archaic models. Like when… Read more »
Paul didn’t include the late nineteenth century concept ‘homosexuality’ in any list of sins; smart though he was he couldn’t possibly have used a word yet to be invented (which has no analogue in koine Greek) or more relevant a category he wouldn’t have considered. This is not mere pedantry: context is all in exegesis.
Classic Newspeak. Homosexuality was everywhere in the Roman Empire. If anything Paul knew more about human sexuality than we do now and decided that to follow Christ ment dying to self. If gay people find this difficult, then like the young rich man who faced with the same question ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ they might make the same choice, but the answer is still the same – ‘with God everything is possible.
Classic anachronism. ‘Homosexuality’ as a term popularised by Kraft-Ebbing in 1886 is used as a term of personality taxonomy. The concept he established is one of what a person is not what a person does. This is wholly absent from Paul’s writings. Paul had no conception of ‘homosexual people’ I.e. a person who by their nature is attracted to the same sex as opposed to ‘people who are having sex with the same sex’. Those are not the same thing. All three references in Paul that are interpreted as being about same sex sex are not in any sense analogous… Read more »
Perhaps you could give an ancient world example of someone who was exclusively same-sex attracted and in a relationship, not married to a woman and having fun with young boys and slaves on the side, as was the norm. Just one example that would match our contemporary understanding of a homosexual man or woman.
Read Roman history starting from Nero onwards,
Why Nero onwards? Please expand on this. Does early Roman imperial history differ from Greek history in some way i was unaware of, with.evidence of exclusive same sex relationships as opposed to bisexuality with a bit on the side and, crucially, a power imbalance? A sham marriage to Poppea? Really? Must dust off those old copies of Tacitus and Suetonius. But I am not convinced.
Can we stand back a bit from this and apply a bit of academic rigour please? If a tree falls in the woods, but there is no one to see it, did that tree fall? And if a homosexual couple have a loving long-term relationship somewhere in Imperial Rome, but but there is no surviving documentary evidence, did that relationship exist? Firstly, the documentary evidence handed down to us concerns almost exclusively the public concerns and values of the elite two or thee percent of society, and the behaviour of the vast majority of population is not recorded. So if… Read more »
Ah, I wondered how long before Pausanias and Agathon would come up. Wrote about them some years ago on https://shared-conversations.com/2016/07/04/pausanias-and-agathon-a-same-sex-relationship/
Helen, Nice to hear from you. I was not surprised to find you commenting here as we have discussed those two lovers on thinking Anglicans in the past. Let me say why I think those 2 are relevant here, mainly for the benefit of others unaware of Plato’s Symposium, and then add a few comments more relevant to you.. In Plato’s symposium Aristophanes gives a lecture on the origin of Love, describing a cosmic beginning time where, like the Adam and Eve, a dyad of 2 conjoined people is split apart, and the origin of loving companionship is when those… Read more »
Helen, getting away from Agathon and Pausanias, what I have been trying to put forward in this thread is that it is important when discussing these things to put the basics in place, like how you define the various words such as homosexuality or gay, and how do you understand the historical sources that one uses, and especially how one understands the limitations of the sources. What they don’t tell you. With that in mind, I wonder if the difference between you and me is that we have a different understanding of the meaning of the word “homosexual”. So many… Read more »
Always the same example, and anyway one swallow does not a summer make. Great article, Helen.
Thank you, Simon.
Correct I should have included Greek history from Alexander the Great onwards.
I do, do you? Just one example.
I struggle with the idea that if a word in English did not exist to describe something, then people in history, who used a different language had no concept of what such a thing was. Did the concept of God exist before the English word God was invented? I take my steer from Diarmaid MacCulloch, discussing the argument that Cardinal Newman cannot be described as homosexual, despite his 30 year close loving relationship with Father Ambrose St John, because the relationship existed before the word homosexual had been invented. MacCulloch describes “some modern historians who should have more common sense… Read more »
Thanks for this thoughtful comment. I also wonder whether homophobia existed before the term did? Because it certainly does now!
It’s not just about the existence of a word: it’s about the change in conception of the world that occasioned a new word coming into being. Before the 19th century there was no word ‘homosexual’ because the conception of sexual orientation as an aspect of personality- did not exist. The neologism was brought into use to describe something newly recognised.
Of course same sex sexual behaviour has existed as long as humans have but the cultural understanding of the a phenomenon was utterly different in Paul’s time to our time.
Fr Andrew. I am aware of the academic ideas about social constructs, and the idea that modern understandings of homosexuality will necessarily be different from the understandings in Paul’s time. But construct theory is just that, a theory, and not an absolute law. Construct theory, like all theories, is a useful idea when applied appropriately but dangerous when applied to excess. It is perfectly correct, and very helpful, to argue that each culture is different, and that understandings of such things homosexuality will vary from culture to culture. But to argue that the cultural understanding of homosexuality in Paul’s time… Read more »
Nigel
As a Practising Roman Catholic I can tell you that in recent years the late Pope Benedict the 16th used his infallible Authority in defining Doctrine, acting within the College of Bishops (following Vatican 2 practice), he officially abolished the concept of Limbo for unbapitised babies as he was aware of how much pastoral damage that did to many parents, so as a result of this, it is no longer the official teaching of the Catholic Church that unbaptised babies go to Limbo. Jonathan
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if the Lord won’t have you, then the devil must……’ Having been brought up on that kind of evangelicalism, that is exactly what they mean, but haven’t got the brass neck to say explicitly. By their own theology, if you’re shut out of heaven, there is only one other place to go. Presumably these jolly fellows deny the concept of purgatory? After all, that’s not in the Bible, is it?
I suppose Adam and Eve were ‘married in the sight of God’, legal marriage not having yet been invented.
https://www.livingout.org/resources/articles/18/what-does-the-bible-say-about-homosexuality
i still think that talking about going to hell is not useful.
Gee, this is tedious. Tina Beardsley and I met with some of the key Living Out leaders before I retired as Director of Changing Attitude in 2015 and they were very clear that they did not identify as gay but as same sex attracted. So they have changed – evolved, as we might say, and their use of words to identify their sexuality has changed. Progress! But it would seem their use (or misuse) of the Bible has not changed and their idea of God as a punitive, cruel, homophobic being hasn’t changed either. A God of heaven and hell… Read more »
Well said. It is indeed tedious.
There is probably a range of views with the Living Out leadership.
What concerns me, even as a non-Christian, is how these attitudes and words are seen by those with little contact with Christian teaching. They hide the extensive loving work done on the ground by Christians, whether ‘professionals’ or not. Paul’s passages on love and the grace of god is surely overriding?
So, Helen King may have been correct, but was her quote useful?
The article by Sam Allberry on the Living Out website states rather bluntly: “Active unrepentant sinners—including those actively involved in same-sex relationships—will not enter God’s kingdom.” It is difficult to parse this in any other way than saying that gay people in relationships are going to hell. That is exactly how it will be heard and interpreted by young people who listen to Living Out, with potentially tragic and disastrous consequences. And there aren’t a range of views on this in the Living Out leadership – this is the official line, the very rationale of the organisation. In the light… Read more »
I made a similar comment on Viamedia.news, and Helen King rather kept on digging. I was shocked by her statement in The Observer, it seemed damaging to individuals and the kingdom of god/Jesus. I also contacted by email Living out, they responded to me by email, and were also very concerned. I am an ex evangelical, not even a church goer nowadays, but I did look up John Stott and Lloyd-Jones. We will see where this goes, misrepresentation I think is one of the ten commandments. I will keep an eye on it. Maybe this conflict can lead to more… Read more »
Nigel, I have approved your many comments on Via Media posts as you have been using that to comment on the Observer piece. And here you are again. Others, like Andrew Godsall, who have looked at the Kaleidoscope course, have quoted the precise wording. Sure, it’s “excluded from heaven” but in a heaven/hell binary that surely means “going to hell”, Can those who are saying these are not equivalent please think about the effect of this course on 11-18 year olds? Does nobody remember Lizzie Lowe? It seems like LGBT people are welcome in heaven with lots of reservations… as… Read more »
Excluded from heaven does not mean going to hell if you adopt an annihilationist eschatology.
There’s always purgatory which is rumoured to be temporary (and underestimated by today’s pushier preachers).
True, but we’re Protestants – or some of us are at least, who rejected Purgatory a very long time ago.
In rejecting the doctrine of purgatory the Reformers threw out the baby with some very dirty bathwater. The legacy for Protestants is that they seem to have left themselves with a simple binary: heaven or hell – your choice, because once you’re dead it’s too late. This seems to deny divine agency. Most of us will die before we’ve let God fully loose on our unhealed selves. Does the God revealed in Jesus Christ then give up on us? Does God foreclose on the work he has already done to make us the people he would have us be? Call… Read more »
Well said.
Thank you Helen.
As you say, what else is “excluded from heaven” going to mean? Unless Living Out have suddenly reinvented limbo as a God ordained state after death!
Their twisted theology has no place in the Church of England but the fact that it is presented as a suitable course of intsruction for 11-18 year olds is simply frightening, let alone frightening in the wake of Makin.
I don’t think anyone goes to heaven, but that’s a wider theological discussion!
I agree. Say more.
Certainly not on this platform, it has enough problems with the bible.
This platform has no problem with the bible, except with those who hold silly views about biblical authority.
I take his point that this is not the place for something on the order of academically serious and theologically informed discussion. It is what it is. I too am not sure what it means to say “go to heaven” except in the realm of jokes about St Peter and the Pearly Gates. And now, pernicious talk at a terribly injurious HTB, God forfend.
Ok so the kingdom of heaven/God does not mean heaven. Canada and Australia’s King is the King of England, but is clearly not England. The opposite of the kingdom of heaven/God is not hell. The binary opposite of the kingdom of heaven/God is the kingdom of this world not hell. So Helen King’s mis interpretation is actually bearing false witness.
‘Don’t worry. If there’s hell below, we’re all gonna go!’ (Curtis Mayfield)
‘Religious people are afraid of going to hell. Spiritual people have already been there.’ (Anon.)
I have never before come across the second quotation. Quite profound. I’ll definitely use it. Makes me wonder who first said it.
It can be used glibly (anti-religiously) but there’s some truth in it!
Ugh. Can we please not fall into that false dichotomy of religious versus spiritual?
‘Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.’ (James)
Helen, I think you will find that you and I have more common ground than you might realise! I was maybe precipitous at jumping into this, but I could not believe any christian group in this day and age could possibly say that anybody who is gay will go to hell. On further investigation, there are things which I see on the Living Out website which I consider problematic. They maybe need reflection or pastoral guidance from some older sensible people. People change. Youthful enthusiam is not always wise. I am in business. It is often said that the most… Read more »
Nigel’s comment on youthful enthusiasm resonates with me, but in a different context. It strikes me that many of the Living Out enthusiasts are young adults. I know from personal experience that it is relatively easy to stay celibate and out of relationships when a young adult. The attractions of your faith (in their case) or your career (in my case) are ample compensation. But as you move into your thirties and forties that often stops working. Some people cope, with difficulty. For others depression appears, and unhealthy coping mechanisms such as alcohol or drugs, or obtaining sexual release from… Read more »
Nigel, I understand that you are questioning the very terms of ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’, at least as they have been popularly understood, but the question is what Living Out believe and teach. I don’t have personal knowledge of that, but I have recently experienced a young person breaking down in tears with me because his classmates were all ‘going to hell’. Not just the ones who are gay, but all those who do not confess Jesus Christ according to the terms he has been taught in his conservative evangelical church. Living Out may not publicly use those terms, but I… Read more »
The contents of this discussion show how far the national church has sunk in the last few years of the evangelical ascendancy. An archbishop of Canterbury has resigned after horrendous criminal activity amongst evangelicals. A ridiculous amount of time and effort has been spent discussing sexual matters which the nation has settled long ago. Some gay evangelicals display such self-hatred they describe themselves with absurd euphemisms like same-sex attraction . Ridiculous debate about which sexual practices qualify which people for eternal damnation is utterly preposterous. Who on earth would want to join such a ridiculous and absurd organisation?
not I ! But it goes beyond sex – in the same passge of Corinthians, how much greed qualifies people for eternal damnation?
You echo my thoughts, Fr David H, as a long-lapsed Anglican come very late in life to a close interest in church history and theology. Who, indeed, would want to join (or in my case re-join) such a ridiculous organisation? discussions about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin are, in comparison, lucid and enlightening. Until I embarked on my recent journey of discovery (because a retired priest friend gave me a liberal theology reading list….) I thought that the whole notion of some sorting of the “quick and the dead” into sheep and goats had… Read more »
I seem to remember in my day the evangelical church was not so absolute. There was a little book by Anderson on christianity and comparative religions, where he discussed whether people of other faiths could enter the kingdom of god. He was quite accepting of the possibility, as far as I can remember. From a review on Amazon As with syncretism, Anderson takes a clear and evangelical stance against universalism. He does however acknowledge that Christ can work redemptively in the lives of people outside the clear ambit of the Gospel, the key being that such “anonymous” salvation must manifest… Read more »
And off we go again! Everyone in the starting blocks of the gay sex/ sin caucus race. I’m tempted to put a line of screaming emojis. This item also contains three other excellent articles- Gavin Drake’s letter to William Nye who has successfully remained in his shadows , Martine Oborne on women in the church( wot not that old chestnut? Thought we’d finished her/ them off) and Bernard N Howard’s courageous letter to St Æbbes… not a mention or a whisper. I would suggest that the smug roll out of ‘Living out’ is the seed corn for the next scandal… Read more »
Yes – Bernard Howard’s piece was truly excellent.
For more years than I care to recall I have sat in meetings in which the blessing of committed relationships between two adult people of the same sex has been described as a ‘Red Line Issue’ and a ‘First Order Issue’. Not my words. I understand that First Order Issue means, by those who use it, to be a salvation issue. So is it or isn’t it? If it is, that two LGBT people who commit themselves to a faithful, lifelong relationship which, shock, involves physical intimacy, are ‘excluded from heaven’, than that sounds like going to hell in a… Read more »
The joke in the Corbyn years was that he was getting upset by people accurately quoting his words, in context, which he regarded as unfair. For older conservative evangelicals, it’s the same problem as older politicians. They got used to being able to go to the back rooms of pubs and vicarages and preach to their friends on a particular topic (homosexuality for the con-evos, in those days Ireland for the left), and then once they’d left the echo chamber be a great deal more emollient. They would, of course, fold carefully-constructed caveats into the public statements to avoid offending… Read more »
I agree with much of this – be careful what you say in public, somebody may read it. Within these groups, they think, correctly, that they should be the ‘salt’. What the general public think is of no interest. However, the world outside of their group is much saltier than they are. It is problem – “in the world, but not of it”, can encourage cultish behaviour. For bishops etc., wandering around in expensive frocks seems ‘normal’. Maybe. To most, it seems silly. in about 1975, I sat down to dinner in a small group, invited by my college chaplain.… Read more »
Human beings are meant to be “attracted” (as word with meaning) to human beings. The con evos told everyone emotions are bad because in their dirty minds it implies sex, and so the world has copied them in telling everyone exactly the same thing – emotions and attraction (now a worldly term) must always lead to sex. If they must go on their camps why don’t they invite girls and women too? And why hive off age groups? So that inadequate elders don’t get shown up by reasonably balanced same age campers? The con evos have got the deficient anthropology… Read more »
I’m picturing Alexander Pope gently smiling
“And now the chapel’s silver bell you hear,
That summons you to all the pride of pray’r:
Light quirks of music, broken and uneven,
Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven.
On painted ceilings you devoutly stare,
Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre,
On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie,
And bring all paradise before your eye.
To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite,
Who never mentions Hell to ears polite.”
Probably best to ignore me, but there seem to be two issues: determining that any group or person is going to eternal damnation determining in particular that those who have sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman are going to eternal damnation The first seems to me very presumptious and damaging, very unloving, very arrogant. Surely, even if you are a biblical evangelical, the view should be that it is only god who judges? Where is the concept of service? Where are the beatitudes? The second issue simply keeps digging with particulars, with obsessive, dangerous and unbiblical… Read more »
I’m waiting for a reply in iambic pentameters to match Pope’s (though notice the brilliant 11 syllable lines about “jig to heaven”). Only joking. ☺️
Could we have a bit more humour in the CofE please. Not trying to make light of what has happened in any way at all, just feel it would help us in the future.
A man walks into a bar. Ouch. It was an iron bar. Back on topic – I hope that we don’t dismiss all conservative evangelicals because of a lack of common sense and immaturity in some. Same way, conservative evangelicals should be cautious to dismiss all high church because some youth nearly suffocated them with too much enthusiasm for incense. There is much goodness in all wings of the church. Many conservatuve evangelicals serve quietly in their comunity for all their lives, whether ordained or not. I have met many conservative evangelicals who were truly inspirational in their service to… Read more »
Having just read the various articles, and a fair few of the comments, they strike some chords with my early Christian experience – OK, not the justifications of floggings, but the idea that physical discomfort such as kneeling in prayer is an aid to sanctification (overcoming the flesh) stands out in particular. So too do various stories, some still circulating, about people who are accidentally killed almost immediately they reject an offer of salvation, or the terrible things which can happen to people – often women – who insist on having their way rather than submitting to God’s. There does… Read more »
John,
Your reference to ‘physical discomfort such as kneeling in prayer’ reminds me of many a judgement of a consistory court with advice from the Church Buildings Council favouring unupholstered chairs: https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2019-01/ccb_seating_guidance_2018.pdf
Puritanism rules.
As regards those of us who are not of sufficient purity of religious belief going to hell, I am minded of the famous story of Chief Hatuey after his capture by the Spanish in sixteenth century Cuba. Before he was burned at the stake, a priest asked Hatuey if he would accept Jesus and go to heaven. Bartolomé de Las Casas recalled his reaction: “[Hatuey], thinking a little, asked the religious man if Spaniards went to heaven. The religious man answered yes… The chief then said without further thought that he did not want to go there but to hell… Read more »
I’m also fascinated that the concept of heaven and hell seem to have been casually re- written. What about paradise ? I believe Our Lord talked about that from the cross or is that a verse we can ignore?
Easy to slip into glib cliches about the English/British attitude towards the erotic. D H Lawrence and Somerset Maugham grappled with it. Watched the 1936 version of ‘of human bondage’ the other night, it is desparate. It is probably much more complicated, issues of class and education arise, there is very little in common between the normal villager and the public school boy. Same problem nowadays wrt. Trump – we expect particular races to vote in particular way, ain’t gonna happen, nothing in common between Karmala Harris and George Floyd (who grew up in a Houston ward which I am… Read more »
I’m with Desmond Tutu: “I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place,” he said in 2013. “I would not worship a God who is homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this.”
He added: “I am as passionate about this campaign as I ever was about apartheid. For me, it is at the same level.”
If I may, a slight correction: Saint Desmond Tutu (pray for us!).