Earlier today, the General Synod of the Church of England took a hugely significant step. It removed a document called “Issues in Human Sexuality” from the discernment process for people being assessed for clerical vocations in the Church of England.
Oh, I can hear you yawning from here. But it really is important and this is a significant step forward.
“Issues” as it has come to be known became a touchstone for the Church of England. It was originally a statement from the Church of England Bishops about what they thought about sex and sexuality. It was never intended to become something that people had to agree with before they could be considered for ordination but it became so. Of course being the Church of England, people tried to make a distinction between agreeing with the document and agreeing to live in compliance with the document. Such corrosive thinking simply led people to tell lies and I’ve always thought that all Christians were agreed that telling lies was a bad thing that none of us should do.
Issues was horrendous back in the 1990s when it was introduced. It set different sexual standards for clergy and laity, it referred to gay people as homophiles, it stated that bisexual people were inherently unfaithful to partners, it seemed to condone conversion therapy and much more. It didn’t just use language that we now find outdated, it used language that was prejudicial at the time and deeply harmful to huge numbers of people. I was trying to become an ordinand when it was published. It was devastating.
It affected other parts of the Anglican Communion too. I know people who trained for ministry in Scotland who were told that living within the no-sex-for-the-homophiles boundaries of Issues was expected of them too. And many of us went to Selection Conferences for ministry that took place in the Church of England where the selectors were trained to expect potential ordinands to indicate that they would live within the boundaries of this document. For a while, we sent clergy from Scotland on Selection Conferences in England with a letter stating that this document didn’t apply in Scotland. But we were still using a system that was based entirely around discrimination against lesbian, gay and bisexual people. (I don’t think transgender people were addressed in the document).
My thoughts today are with those whose vocations were crushed by Issues. And those who managed to have vocations upheld but whose personal lives were damaged by it. Some people lived unhappy lives that might have been completely different. My particular thoughts tonight are of a wonderful priest I once worked with whose love never spoke its name. He loved another priest and remained closeted – living or seeming to be living within Issues because that is what his church expected of him. When he died, his obituary in the Church Times did not mention the love of his life. He was presumed to be living within the boundaries of Issues and he died being presumed to be living within it. It is a simple reality that some people were expected to lie in life and could not have truths told when they died. (And that meant others who were beloved by clergy sometimes went unacknowledged and were ignored at funerals).
For the sake of him and hundreds of others whose lives have been harmed by this document both within and beyond the Church of England, I welcome the fact that Issues is now gone.
And now the next questions.
Will the Church of England stop selling Issues and presumably making money from the wretched document? It is still on sale on Amazon after all.
And more importantly for everyone.
- When will we hear apologies from church leaders for the harms that churches have done in relation to policies on human sexuality?
- How will UK churches communicate their repentance for previous harms done, to churches in other parts of the world which have enthusiastically endorsed such policies in response to their adoption here – particularly those churches which think of the Church of England as their mother church?
- What will compensation for the anti-gay policies of churches eventually look like?
Oh I well remember the day ‘Issues’ landed with a loud thud through the letter box. I had been ordained for over 10 years by then. And I reeled in reading it.
Before then the general culture of conversation about sexuality in the Church was ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’. And most bishops acknowledged that among their most able and effective clergy many were gay men, some in relationships, and often deployable in parishes where others would not contemplate living and working.
But remember the context. This was also a period when AIDS was an international emergency and in Britain the Thatcher government sought to outlaw the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality through section 28 of the Local Government Act. And for sure, ‘Issues’ was a direct consequence of the passing of the amended Tony Higton General Synod private members’ motion declaring all ‘homosexual acts’ as sinful. The consequent noise of the shutting of closet doors was deafening.
In my diocese the bishop asked one of the archdeacons to convene regular confidential meetings with a few gay clergy to offer them an opportunity to talk about the effects of all this on their lives and ministry. Some would not trust the Church to participate in such enterprises. Understandably. And huge numbers of vocations were thwarted and lost. And are to this day, as the toxic debates continue in the C of E in a social context which has changed beyond imagining.
So thank you Kelvin, as ever, for your insightful questions.
Cedric, I recall you speaking to the LGBT Network at the Cathedral about Issues and that it was reaffirmed by the C of E around about that time too. I wasn’t so aware of it when it was published (being about eight years old at the time and also a Roman Catholic), but I remember so clearly from what you said how devastating it had obviously been and still was. I remember thinking at the time of that reaffirmation, “oh, I can never go home”. It became so clear to me that the Church of England wasn’t somewhere I could feel welcome as long as it was allowed to stand.
Kelvin, I can understand why you are glad that the offensive language of Issues has gone. Ironically, it was actually a statement written by liberals of the day; the main author was Richard Harries.
And conforming to Issues was never the real question. The real question is conforming to Canons B30 and C26, so that the pattern of life of clergy should reflect the doctrine of the Church ‘according to the teaching of Jesus’. All Issues did was make that clear and unambiguous (though in an unhelpful and obsessive way) with regard to sexual intimacy. Ironically, it was the liberal ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy which cemented Issues in place as a response.
And of course, with Issues gone, the Canons remain in place, and the demand is the same. The good thing about GPCC is that it sets this one issue in the context of many others, which is much healthier.
But on the question in hand—nothing has changed. You seem to have missed that.
No Ian. It isn’t that I’ve missed that. It is that I don’t believe that.
Issues was a massively offensive document that coloured absolutely everything the Church of England had to say about sexuality. Changes to Canons will look significantly different in the light of its removal.
A great deal is changed by its removal.