What is in Kelvin's Head?

Outrage is not a mission strategy

20/01/2016

Well, the days are passing by since the Primates of the Anglican Communion issued their communique at the end of their meeting in Canterbury.

The reaction to the communique has been swift and loud. Very many people whom I know are outraged by it and voicing their anger all over the internet.

I feel curiously devoid of anger myself and a little detached from the outrage.

Don’t mistake what I’m saying here – I’m pleased, very pleased to see that lots of people appear to be joining in the struggle for gay and lesbian people to be treated like human people and given the same rights and joys as anyone else. However, I suspect that the things we hope for are not going to be achieved by outrage alone. Indeed, I find myself suspecting that they are not going to be won by outrage at all.

I happen to think that the Primates of the Anglican Communion have overreached themselves and proclaimed a judgement that they had no authority to proclaim. This needs to be stated and restated. (And I note that this view has some support from those who have very different views than I do as to how the Communion should hang together).

However, I have been a little troubled to see headlines appearing, and being fuelled by friends, which suggest that the LGBT Community has been “vanquished” or defeated.

This is simply not true and progressive people gain nothing by repeating the fantasies of the far religious right. We are not vanquished. We are not defeated. And neither are we afraid.

I’m puzzled as to why anyone might have thought that homophobia (either in Africa or in the West) might have been wiped out by the Primates’ Meeting last week. That simply wasn’t going to happen. Once again, I don’t agree with what the Primates said but all they offered was a mistaken opinion. I do not give them the power to make judgements they have no authority to enforce or uphold. And I certainly do not give them the wherewithal to affect my own well-being.

Do I doubt that God loves me utterly as a gay man? No.

Do I have even the slightest inclination that God might be in the business of withholding blessings from gay couples simply because a bunch of church leaders haven’t yet recognised the gay pride rainbow that God painted in the heavens above Noah whilst announcing that divine love was a covenant for everyone? Of course not.

I think that it might be helpful for a quick dose of very simple queer theory here.

Justin Welby and his desperately out of control media team worked very hard to get us to believe the fiction that the Anglican Communion is a “Family” of churches. All the rhetoric coming out of the Anglican Communion offices over the weeks leading up to the Primates’ Meeting was directed towards selling us the Communion as a family.

The US Church has just come out.

And the Communion Primates rather tragically acted out one of the ways that families sometimes tragically behave. They behaved exactly as dysfunctional families sometimes do by excluding the one coming out rather than embracing them. The behaviour of the Primates mirrors parents who reject a gay child and who meet honesty with rejection.

Now, there’s no minimising the upset that such behaviour causes. It is destructive and harmful.

Those who are on the receiving end often suffer. However, in my experience, those who come through that tend to find love in other places. Friendship, dear friendship seems to take over where the brutality of family life has failed them.

There are many ways that people can respond to such rejection. I am pretty sure that outrage itself is not enough.

One response is to take the cruel names thrown at one and to sew sequins onto them and wear them as badges of pride and honour. I can see Susan Russell doing that with her piece “On Becoming a Second Class Anglican” – indeed it seems only a matter of time before I make badges saying Second Class Anglican.

Changing Attitude Scotland is doing the same by looking on this as the beginnings of a grouping in the Anglican Communion that we can be proud of:

Rather than seeing the “sanctions” being applied to the US based Episcopal Church as that church being sent to the naughty step for three years, Changing Attitude Scotland believes that it is possible that in time this may be seen as the emergence of a group of provinces in which the full inclusion of LGBT people will be an unquestioned badge of honour. We will work for the Scottish Episcopal Church to join such a grouping. Over the last few years in Scotland we have seen public opinion change from being broadly suspicious of gay and lesbian people to public opinion being broadly supportive of gay and lesbian people. We believe that we see the same thing happening across the world and that this change is unstoppable.

Taking pride in who we are is one of the ways that we combat the hatred that can lead to family rejection. That works for individuals and it will work for whole churches too.

One of the best responses to being rejected as a gay person is to reject in turn the narrative of being vanquished and beaten and to sew on your sequins and be fabulous. To be honest, I’ve had enough of outrage alone.

Outrage is not a mission strategy. If we are going to get our message over, that God loves everyone, then we need to find a bit of pride amongst the Anglican ruins, pick ourselves up and dust ourselves down and polish up our rhinestones and march down the street singing, “All people – all! yes! all! people that on earth do dwell – sing to the Lord with cheerful voice”.

My response to the Primates Meeting was to use it as a moment of mission. I pinned up a pic of me under a rainbow umbrella outside the cathedral with the words: “Gay, straight, single, married, partnered, single again, old, young, local, non-local, Episcopalian, non-Episcopalian, Christian, seeker, all are welcome in this place”. I also posted it on facebook and found that it had an instant appeal. It was saying nothing other than what we say every week here in St Mary’s but it went a wee bit viral all the same and that particular version of our inclusive message of love is now heading towards 20000 views. Your church can’t help but grow if you get publicity like that. And you, yes you, right there, right here, right now, can get exactly that to happen.

Remember that God is love. God is not bonds of affection.

People out there want to hear that message. Grumpy about the Primates? Tell the world that God is love – proper love, not mealy-mouthed, compromised institutional bonds of affection but actual love itself. Use your sermons and noticeboards if you have to.

This is a mission moment. Don’t express outrage alone. Express the love of God to those who need it most.

We don’t do being vanquished at St Mary’s – we do being fabulous. It is more fun and a foretaste of heaven’s ultimate pride party.

Outrage isn’t a mission strategy. Being fabulous and telling people God really loves them is.

Indeed – it is the only mission strategy worth the name.

#Primates2016, Anglican Communion, Anglican Primates, Mission Strategy, Primates’ Meeting

20 responses to “Apologies have consequences too”

Andrew Cain

15/04/2016

You say so often and so eloquently what I feel.

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1. Father Ron Smith
  
  16/04/2016
  
  Food for serious thought, Father Kelvin. I don’t suppose there has been any objection raised by the Church of England Bishops about the liberalising ativity of our Norwegian partner’s in Christ. It is this continuing double-mindedness that exposes us Anglicans to the charge of structured hypocrisy. Keep up the good work you are doing on your web-site. Christ IS risen, Alleluia!
  
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Alan Wilson

15/04/2016

Thank you, Kelvin. It’s certainly a change of the mood music going on, but self-lacerating apologies are subject to the law of diminishing returns unless they indicate what we call “Metanoia” – change of mind, aka repentance. This means things real change. Without it, apologies breed cynicism, not hope. When, for example, a bishop tells us he is ashamed whenever he encounters homophobia in the church, curious minds want to ask him “when did you last encounter what you call homophobia in the church? What was it like? How was it separable from the ideology that validated it? And since it’s such a shameful thing, what are you going to do about it?”

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1. Kelvin
  
  16/04/2016
  
  The real disconnect for me is that Justin Welby is someone who clearly does know something about what reconcilliation is. He can’t have done that job in Coventry and not known and he can’t have named reconcilliation as one of the key strands of his time as Archbishop without knowing that metanoia is part of the deal if that is what you are chasing after.
  
  However, I can only come back again and again to the possibility that there are those who simply think that LGBT are indeed actually worth less than real people.
  
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  1. June Butler
    
    18/04/2016
    
    Kelvin, after I read your words about the empty apologies by authorities in the church after which their behavior does not change, I could not help but think what you stated in your comment, that the leaders, with exceptions like Alan Wilson, believe LGTB folks are lesser. What else can we think? My advice would be to stop apologizing and be honest, which would be a step in the right direction, because at least the hypocrisy would end.
    
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adrian copping

16/04/2016

Thank you for this. Something similar has been happening here in Wales in the past week or so where our Bishops have apologised AND issued some prayers which are authorised for use in connnection with ministry to LGBTI people. This is to be welcomed as a sign of a step in a positive direction but, at the same time, leaves a lot of questions and many disappointed.

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Bob Webster

16/04/2016

Saying it is a “constant source of deep sadness that people are persecuted for their sexuality” is not an apology. At best it is a request that someone should stop making him feel bad. That could be the people doing the persecuting, or it could be us who should just be quiet and preferably go away. An apology would be “I apologize for the hurt I have caused and as a consequence of recognizing my sin I will cease that behaviour and do everything I can to get others to stop as well.”

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Ruth Richards-Hill

16/04/2016

Kelvin, you are an expert at stating things so eloquently that makes everyone else in the Anglican communion squirm.

I was not oblivious to the fact that as a lesbian woman I entered a family of churches with a huge diversity of attitudes towards my sexuality. It was only because of the grace and love of Jesus Christ that I felt safe to come into the church despite my “flaws” and receive baptism. Is my baptism any less valid because I am a lesbian?

As a convert from Orthodox Judaism I suspect that I am sometimes more acutely aware than others at what should be in my mind a glaring hypocrisy. Rabbinical thought always looks for an alternatives to explain why a certain situation does or does not apply according to halachah (ecclesiastical law – much like the canons). But the balance either exists or it doesnt. Jesus speaks about divorce and makes it quite clear that its not really an option, while in rabbinical law, it certainly is an option. We are taught that he came to fulfil the law and yet we his church are part of a new covenant are we not? The church seems to have taken the easy way out and will marry people who have divorced, but will not marry gay couples. So if divorced people are part of the new covenant, why arent us gay folk?

I could get into all the biblical quotation arguments and as someone that reads Classical Hebrew better than most Anglicans I know, I have no fear in taking a stand on my point. (My Greek needs a little more work however.) That said, I dont see a balanced biblical foundation for excluding some that are automatically excluded by literal translation of scripture, but not others, but rather an inherited bigotry and hypocrisy that continues to thrive simply to satisy the whims of member churches whose societies havent quite experienced the journey that ours has. While that doesnt invalidate their position, neither does it invalidate the position of our society and our spiritual progress should not be hindered to satisy the agenda of those religious leaders that appear to be pandering to the demands of those churches that have not walked the path of ours.

I have arguments that cover more than simple translations and exegesis particularly surrounding what the rules were both before and after the death of Christ, but those are for another day. I know that I am a baptised Christian and Jesus loves me as much as any other, not because I am gay or straight, but because I am one of his, and therefore he wants me to thrive within his covenant rather than the stifling, unreasonable and hair splitting laws that came before – Ones that I personally know how incredibly impossible they are to live by, no matter what your sexuality, or colour, or intellectual ability. – I was there once.

When our Bishops and leaders realise that Christ died exactly to make the Christian lives of the likes of me equally valid as straight people, then perhaps we’ll make a little more progress and not see these “apologies” as merely lip service. Its almost embarrassing to LGBT people for whom their faith is a core part of their lives. It certainly is for me.

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Ruth Harley

16/04/2016

Any child in my Sunday School group could tell you that repentance is not just “saying sorry” it is “saying sorry, being sorry, and changing”. Possibly ++Justin’s words make it as far as the first of these, but I’m not convinced they signify the second, and the third is nowhere in sight. Perhaps I should send my 5 year old theologians to Lambeth and/or Lusaka to explain! Or perhaps it’s just that those who are issuing these ‘apologies’ aren’t really thinking in terms of repentance, or seeing the need for it, at all.

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Mark Falby

16/04/2016

Apologies mean nothing if not backed by action.

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Junia

16/04/2016

Well I did recently get brutally and spectacularly dumped by an American lesbian, so perhaps they just are naturally more wicked over there…

In seriousness though, thank you for this wonderfully elegant post, Kelvin, summarising so much of what I have felt since ++Justin’s statement in January. I’m starting to get a little sick of being apologised to.

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1. Cynthia
  
  17/04/2016
  
  Speaking as an American lesbian, I’m sure the Norwegian lesbians are much better people, and that we are “naturally more wicked…” 😉
  
  Kelvin expresses well the debacle of January. But interestingly, Justin just delivered an amazing sermon at ACC-16 that marks a major change of heart and theology if he’s sincere. We’ll see. A lot has happened since January.
  
  Have a look at the sermon, it’s in the Anglican Communion news. I’d hate to think that those are just empty words. Time will tell. But I want hope.
  
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  1. Kelvin
    
    17/04/2016
    
    Could you point us towards the sermon, Cynthia. I’m not seeing anything at all that’s new in relation to the things I’ve written about above.
    
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    1. Cynthia Katsarelis
      
      17/04/2016
      
      Here it is: http://www.anglicannews.org/news/2016/04/new-calls-for-new-times-archbishop-welbys-presidential-address-to-acc-16.aspx
      
      To me this seems like a new direction, born of recent realities, and perhaps inspired by the Holy Spirit.
      
      Of course, my hopes could be typical, off-the-charts American optimism. We wicked American Episcopal lesbians just know that the Promised Land is at the end of the next rainbow.
      
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      1. Kelvin
        
        17/04/2016
        
        Cynthia – this is what I was writing about above. It isn’t a new direction. It is what I’m complaining of. Talk of reconciliation whilst not engaging in it.
        
        There’s not a word in it about a new direction on the way the ABC relates to the Anglican Communion’s troubles. Not one.
      2. Cynthia Katsarelis
        
        17/04/2016
        
        It seems like he was asking people to focus on the major characters, climate change and religious violence, and to work together within our diversity. That sounds like a new tack. Of course, it will be interesting to see if this translates into action. Will the discrimination against married clergy stop? Will the ABC stop pandering to the primates who didn’t show up to ACC-16?
        
        You might be right, you seem very prophetic to me. But I want you to be wrong this time. I want hope, and to work together on things that actually matter.
      3. Kelvin
        
        17/04/2016
        
        There are simply no signs of what you hope for, Cynthia. None.
      4. Cynthia Katsarelis
        
        17/04/2016
        
        Perhaps not. But I was recently a TEC delegate to the UN Commission on the Status of Women where I met a posse of awesome women from the Anglican Communion Women delegation. We had great interaction and they affirmed a “walking together” statement they wrote in 2007. It says they are staying in communion, no matter what the guys do. We women in TEC are drafting a response, graciously receiving and affirming the statement. Against this, Justin doesn’t stand a chance and he might as well change his tune.
        
        PS. One of the awesome delegates was a Rachel from St. Andrew’s, Scotland.
Richard Barnes

17/04/2016

I was really hopeful about the Anglican Communion’s purpose from reading Rachael’s blogs from UN CSW last month. But not for long. ABC Welby’s Sermon reads like a random speech generator and says much the same as he’s been doing for months in global fora.
It’s like a couple who talk about the garden and the difficult neighbours because they don’t want to talk about their sex life.
Clever way to end ACC with everyone apparently united by talking about bigger issues.
But to read ++Welby asking for nuanced theology, when he’s totally binary (Christian=happy, healthy, wealthy & wise) just made me laugh.

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Robin

19/04/2016

> In the last week we’ve had the latest document on family life to come from the Vatican and it is very clear that there’s a change in tone from the current pope and it is hard not to welcome that.

I don’t see any change of tone in the following, which is the beginning of paragraph 251 of “Amoris Laetitia”.

> 251. In discussing the dignity and mission of
the family, the Synod Fathers observed that, “as
for proposals to place unions between homosexual
persons on the same level as marriage,
there are absolutely no grounds for considering
homosexual unions to be in any way similar or
even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage
and family”.

I’d call that a monumental snub, deliberately administered, or an equally deliberately administered drenching with cold water.

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