What is in Kelvin's Head?

“Issues” is no more

15/07/2025
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 It didn’t just use language that we now find outdated, it used language that was prejudicial at the time and deeply harmful to huge numbers of people.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?
Church of England, gay, Issues, issues in human sexuality, lesbian, LGBT, synod

7 responses to “Sermon preached on 1 July 2012”

Ryan

02/07/2012

Excellent stuff! It’s worth noting I think that overt antisemitic caricatures, rather than being left in the 20s, were very much a feature of ”The Passion of the Christ”, much beloved of certain fundamentalist/evangelicals, whereas the Christ-analogy Bingo approach to the Jewish Scriptures popular in some quarters certainly supports a reductive misunderstanding of the Jewish religion (and so people?)

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Eric Stodadart

02/07/2012

Indeed, an excellent sermon although there’s no getting away from Jesus-a-good-Jew being critical of some aspects of some of the various streams of Judaism of his time. His comment on one particular way of tithing is a case in point.
Having said that, Kelvin’s Jewish scholar is spot on. Whilst we might learn about others by considering their friends perhaps we understand others more when we look at those whom they feel the need to denounce. In evangelical preaching I have perpetrated in the past ‘Judiasm’ was a convenient container into which I could drop criticisms of ’empty ritual’ or ‘salvation by works’ that my congregation probably could understand as coded references to Roman Catholic and liberal Protestant piety, respectively.
Projecting fears and taboos onto characters in a narrative is bad enough but, of course, real people are caught up in the out workings of such stereotypes. More positively, I think that figuring out who, for us, are ‘the baddies’ in the biblical texts – and on what grounds – is a salutary exercise. For me, that probably means starting with S. Paul. Not that I see him as one of the baddies but reflecting on what I might be projecting on to what I think are his theological off-days would likely be useful.

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Suz Cate

02/07/2012

Important message, artfully delivered. Thank you. I’ve been reading Jesus the Jew by Geza Vermes–an excellent resource for considering your second question.

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Eamonn

02/07/2012

Oh, dear, Kelvin! I shan’t ever be able to recycle the sermon I preached yesterday, after reading yours. Thanks for sharing this deeper insight (said he ruefully).

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Marion

03/07/2012

Surely there’s also something important here about recognising that none of us is prejudice free – we just see our own targets as valid. The only way I’ve learned to manage anti-semitism within the church (and the scriptures) is to explore the underlying fear and to recognise that we all live with fear and insecurities. Having been on the receiving end of racial prejudice, I know how easy it is to dismiss it as ignorance – and of course, on one level, that is true. But we are all ignorant about how it is to live in someone else’s skin. I found it more difficult to deal with the people who told me ‘some of our best friends are Jews’ than it was to deal with the people who hurled insults. It seems to me that Jesus the Jew challenges us to recognise our fears and to allow the possibility of transformation if we can find the courage to acknowledge our true selves. Maybe a starting place is to recognise that difference is OK – or more than OK; through recognising difference we have the potential to learn and grow.

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Craig Nelson

05/07/2012

I feel Pharisees in particular get a very bad press from the New Testament which may not be fully warranted.

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Rosie Bates

09/07/2012

Wow, heard Matthew’s version of this Gospel at Mass this evening and I am still gasping and wondering. Thanks for new vision and allowing the scholarly woman to touch you and ‘blow your mind’. My previous sermons are well and truly dumped and I repent of them. Drained is love in making full, bound in setting others free…. came to mind and so much more to be thankful for. I had a Jewish doctor in London in the 70’s who was rather angry with me when I wished to continue with a life threatening pregnancy. He persevered with this stubborn scared young Christian (one who understands why some would decide otherwise) and when he came to visit each day after the birth of John he totally ignored me and sat rocking in prayer beside the miracle in the crib. He and his lovely wife honoured us with their presence at John’s Baptism – a first step into another place of worship for them as they approached their seventies. We continue to journey together now that they are in the fullness of The Kingdom. I was so fortunate and my dear Doc who was known to me as ‘Uncle Eric’ is still very much part of our family. He always ended his surgery with an important appointment – His wife confided in me that it was to watch Eastenders! which he found therapeutic – so do I as the Gospel message is always popping up in the midst of horrors and so are the babies!

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