Calling out Homophobia in the Church of England

It is very, very rare that I accuse someone of homophobia. Those who know me in Scotland, who happen to hold different views to me will know that it simply isn’t an accusation that I throw around.

However, I did make that accusation last night, against the Director of Communications of the Church of England.

Here’s the conversation. You need to know that Patrick Strud is the journalist to whom Christian rock musician Vicky Beeching told her coming out story which was printed in the Independent. Rev Arun Arora is the Director of Communications for the Church of England. Andrew Forshew-Cain is a priest in the Church of England.

In responding to a tweet about Vicky Beeching and the future of the Church of England, Arun Arora said that she was welcome in the church because all are broken. This is an entirely inadequate response to someone who has just come out. It is fine to say that all are broken – it isn’t fine to link that brokenness to the identity of groups of people who know prejudice at first hand. It wouldn’t be acceptable to say that black people are welcome in church because everyone is broken and so they are welcome – that would be racist. It is the same with those of us who are gay.

I think that Andrew Forshew-Cain and I might well be regarded as people well qualified to know what church sponsored homophobia looks like.

I’ve woken up today to many posts on facebook and on twitter from people agreeing that this tweet was unacceptable.

I’m absolutely prepared to agree that Arun Arora did not mean to be offensive in his post. However, he needs to learn from the people on facebook and twitter who have found it offensive.


Comments

  1. Hayley says

    God love him, he is just showing us what it’s like to have a blind spot. But there’s no need to worry, God heals the blind and the lame… all are welcome šŸ˜‰

  2. Ann Memmott says

    Lost track of how many times I’ve asked some in the CofE to welcome folks like me as equally loved before God – born disabled and LGBT. “We are all broken” certainly has an extra punch to it when said by a straight non-disabled Bishop or communications supremo to someone who is disabled and gay. It’s not received as a statement of equality; it’s a statement of not being heard and of our needs and pain being dismissed. Anyone failing to understand this is being a real challenge to equality in our churches. Thank goodness for those who do indeed manage to understand and to welcome.

  3. I suspect Arun subscribes to the “We were not worthy even to pick up the crumbs under your table” drivel that we’re all too often expected to repeat mindlessly as part of the eucharistic liturgy. I for one refuse to say it thus. I say, “We were but worthy to pick up the crumbs…” which to me fits in better with the gospel story it comes from. Whether or not we’re all “broken” is a moot point in my book: the thing that counts is Jesus picks up the pieces (pieces scattered largely by other people as well as life in general) and puts us back together; and so far I don’t see him putting any LGBTI people back together according to a supposedly straight blueprint. On the contrary, as I’ve said many times, I see him blessing LGBTI people just as he blesses straight people. If Vicky and other LGBTI people are broken, it’s time to admit that it’s the church that broke them. So come on, Rev Arun, if you’re reading: repent and become part of the solution instead of the problem!
    [cross-posted from the CA facebook thread]

  4. Bro David says

    It feels much like the ā€œLove the sinner, hate the sin,ā€ mantra often thrown about in US evangelical circles.

  5. Rosemary Hannah says

    Those tweets were not about general brokenness at all. And Vicky Beeching was demonstrating great strength in the interviews she gave and not any kind of brokenness at all. I was gobsmacked, reading them, that ANYBODY could imagine that was an appropriate thing to write or say another living person. It was just so offensive.

    I was deeply moved, as anybody must be, at reading Vicky Beeching’s account of her heartbreaking attempt change her sexuality and the terrible accounts of how others tried to ‘help’ her. What comes over is that despite what she was put through, she is not at all a broken person in any way we would read broken.

    Now Rev. Arora may indeed wish to argue that we are all sinners, and I would agree. It is totally plain to me that there is a lot of sinful action in this story – the attempted exorcism of Miss Beeching strikes me as a very sinful thing. There is plenty of brokenness -especially in the attitudes of some of those around her to her sexuality. Miss Beeching herself doubtless has many sins, and, if Rev. Arora wants to make a nice distinction, also her fair share of sin, but I suggest this does not include her being attracted to women, any more than an desire for one’s own sex is some kind of brokenness.

  6. Rosemary W says

    This was the rubbish spouted at me every Sunday when I used to attend Church (CofE): That we are all bad, born bad, nothing we do can redeem us or make us good, except obeying their rules and believing their mantra. That Jesus died for our sins, in place of us, so we owe him big time, and if we don’t acknowledge his sacrifice then we’re going somewhere very unpleasant and very hot for all of eternity. And who sends us there? Oh, our ‘loving father’! Yes, you can imagine my confusion and bewilderment and anxiety. Am I thankful enough? Have I prayed enough? I’ll never be good enough.

    So, there is a sign outside the Church which says “all are welcome”. There should be an asterisk *(terms and conditions apply), because people are ‘welcome’ so long as they are prepared to be ‘problems to be solved’. So, LGBTQ people are only ‘welcomed’ if they are ashamed of their ‘lifestyle choices’, and are guilt-ridden messes in need of being put right and thus ‘saved’ from themselves. Such damaging nonsense as this contributed to my severe depression, from which thankfully, now church-free, I am recovering.

    What the CofE really needs to do is what most of us do during the course of our lives: grow up. Mature. Evolve. It’s a natural process and it surprises me that the hierarchy seems to be so resistant. The creator God surely endowed us all with complex brains and the power of reasoning because he hoped or planned that we would use these amazing organs for the good of ourselves and thus humanity. In this 21st century through science and philosophy and psychology we are so much more knowledgeable about humanity and the planet on which we live, and yet the CofE wishes us to live by a rule book written by, and for, primitive people who did not have this knowledge and awareness.

    The people who limit God are the very ones who I assume should be extolling his omnipotence and awesome power. But no. These ignorant (and I mean *wilfully* ignorant) people dressed in lurex dresses and silly hats are the naysayers. No, God couldn’t do that. No, God couldn’t possibly want that, mean that, love that. They demean the very being they claim to worship. And by denying the validity of the lives of other human beings, such as lesbians, homosexuals, bisexuals, transgender and queer people, by denying their right to exist the way they were made, then these ridiculous officials in their fancy dress actually deny God’s very creation.

    • Kes Grant says

      Wow. Very powerfully written. Thank you for writing this.
      As a priest and therefore “representative” of the church I want to apologise for the hurt caused to you in the past.
      I wish I could get others not to judge God by the behaviour if some Christians in the way you have.

  7. Neal Terry says

    “Faith, here’s an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven.”

    The defence of ambiguity is not the most appealing skill in a Director of Communications.

  8. Kes Grant says

    “We are all broken” sounds much like “I’m not racist I have a black friend” I say to my grandchildren they need to put their listening ears on sometimes. When oh when will the people in power of the CofE put their listening ears on. If I say something that is taken the wrong way and upsets someone the first thing I say is sorry. There is very little contrition from the powers that be for the institutional homophobia they either collude with or peddle. It is so frustrating. All we can do is keep standing up for love until all the fear is past. I hope Vicky’s courage is contagious and more and more respected members of the CofE come out and bring the Church to its knees.

  9. Interesting. Have been perusing the conversations and discovered this tweet from Rev Arun that everyone seems to have missed:

    being gay is not broke or flawed. Bring human is. The church is we all are.

    http://twitter.com/RevArun/status/500019502709755905

    • Neal Terry says

      Indeed, as I don’t Twit. But now I can be pedantic too; what price punctuation?

    • The Church is indeed broken and flawed. Never more so than when its Director of Communications demonstrates such an unwillingness to be educated.

      It seems to be his belief that we are all broken. That isn’t my theology, but I can accept that it is a view of God and the world that some people have. What I cannot accept is someone who wilfully refuses to get — and ignorance is one thing, but he is past that now and into the territory of sticking his fingers in his ears — that when a person says, “I’m gay,” and he responds by saying, “We are all broken,” what he is saying is that her being gay is the thing that makes her broken.

    • There’s also the unspoken subtext that being gay is perfectly alright so long as you don’t in any way act on it. Like, say, wanting to fall in love and marry the person you love.

  10. Neal Terry says

    ā€œWe are all brokenā€
    Iā€™m not. Itā€™s a crap word to describe human beings. It dehumanises and is a reductive label that should be reserved for things, not people. True, there are bits of me that have dropped off and/or donā€™t function any more, but is that the whole of me? There are emotions that feel unhelpful or inadequate or despairing, but are they the whole of me? There are relationships that hurt and are failing, but is there not hope and future in the whole of me? Is that my definitive state? God created and declared it good, Christ came that I may have that fullness. Incomplete is not broken, unfinished is not broken. I will not accept a theology of limitations. I refuse to be limited by others application of adjectives. My fullness is not constrained by your closets.

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