Samaritan Trouble

It was a hot day, and the Levite and Priest were delighted to find a country inn at a bend in the road where they could stop for a drink. It was cool and shady, and a great place for a bit of Temple talk on the way up to Jerusalem.

Supping up, they saw two figures coming up the road — a traveller and his donkey, and on the donkey was what looked like a heap of bloody rags, but, they could see as the ensemble drew closer, was actually the unconscious body of a man who had fallen among thieves back along the way.

“We must have passed him on the road. Thank God we're safe!  But however did we miss him?” asked the Priest.
“I was praying a Psalm of Ascents” said the Levite.
“I was working up a speech for the Sanhedrin,” said the Priest. “well at least he got picked up”
“I know,” said the Levite. “But look who by! A Bloody Samaritan! — Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire?”
“Now, now,” said the Priest. “But look, the silly man’s put the filthy beggar on his donkey, like one of us. And he's given him his purse. He doesn't even know where he’s been. I ask you!”
“And now they're stopping here!” said the Levite. “By the Beard of Abraham! Time for us to move on!”
“I don’t drink in Samaritan Taverns, that’s for sure,” said the Priest, “That fool of an Innkeeper seems to think those dogs are equal to real children of Abraham. Not that Publicans ever were that hot on Real Theology.”

So the two Holy Men moved on, with a mental note to get the Innkeeper’s licence checked, and an AOB warning to the rest of the Sanhedrin to drink somewhere else for the next three years.

After all, they agreed, with Palestine Secularising the way it is these days, they had to do something to show that there is a God in Israel...

Take Your Protein Packs & Put your Helmets On

Who could have guessed that the Anglican Primates’ Meeting in Canterbury, “a week of leisurely thought, prayer and deep consultation” would be rolled off the front page by David Bowie's death? C’est la vie. 

But here, for the record, is my Sunday interview about the letter I signed at the weekend (with 3,000+ others) with Antony Bushfield on Premier Christian Radio. I've mildly edited it for print...

AB Bishop tell us first of all why you decided to put your name to this letter?

AW It seems to me that for many years Anglicans have been talking about homosexuality. Strangely, perhaps, even if you go back 20 years we've always been agreed that discrimination against gay people is wrong. We are all made in God's image. We can certainly have discussions about theology and homosexuality but the infinite value to God of every human being really is not negotiable for Christians. Yet, after talking about this for many years, we look around the world and terrible things go on aimed at gay people. Very often, to our shame, they involve religious people including Christians and Muslims in particular. What we're saying is it's time to get real about this, and to stop offering just good intentions. Paul said this in one of his letters — we know what’s right but we don’t necessarily do it. And what we are saying to our brothers the Primates in the Anglican Communion (brothers, because they are all actually male) is that this really is time now for action. That’s not just for saying sorry, and we got it wrong, and we really like you (whatever we say about you we really like you). Really, that's not good enough. We’ve got to take action to stop some of the dreadful things going on around the world aimed at LGBT people

AB You mentioned gay people are treated as second-class citizens. Do you think that refers to the UK as well as perhaps parts of Africa?

AW Yes, absolutely. I know of a very good gay ordinand who, plainly, God has been calling to a form of authorised ministry but he’s absolutely stuck in our system because the system itself discriminates against him. If he tells the truth about himself he may not go forward with the process and what he says when I discuss it with him is “look, this is to do with God’s plan for my life. I don't want to go forward with that on a false prospectus.’ Obviously if he lied he’d be fine, but he’s not willing to do that. He’s not willing to lie before God and before the church. He wants me fully accountable and the present system doesn't really provide for people like that. You’ve either got to stop pedal things are go “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” in various ways and be lucky in where you happen to come from. It shouldn’t be like that. We ought to be able to see the grace of God in people's lives without skewing because of any aspect of who they are, whether it’s disability, race, gender or, of course, sexual orientation.

AB Bishop I wonder if you have any insight into what Justin Welby or John Sentamu might feel about this issue because they have spoken about gay marriage but they haven’t nailed their colours to the mast specifically. Do you have any insight on what they might be feeling?

AW I don't know much about the Archbishop of York — it’s a long way from here to York. I do know there are various things about Archbishop Justin that are really quite important. One is that he is a world citizen in the sense that he's been all over the world and he’s worked in some of the nastiest most difficult places both as a Christian leader and also in his life before ordination. So that’s a big plus. Secondly, actually, Archbishop Justin has always been unambiguous about the need not to discriminate against people. He’s actually very clear about that. He was saying in the autumn, at a large Evangelical Church in Oxford, that in the church we have sometimes got this deeply wrong. We've sometimes treated gay people as though they were subhuman or inhuman, and we need to do something about that. So I don't think our letter will fall on entirely deaf ears. And finally the other thing about Archbishop Justin is that he has a special gift in terms of reconciliation. He’s said that’s got to be one of the themes of his time as Archbishop of Canterbury. So I can't give you any insider information, but I can say that I think some of the thing’s that we’re saying are close to his heart and we want to support him to do the things that he needs to do to provide leadership in the situation we now find ourselves.

AB Bishop would you accept that the best message could lead to the breakup of the global Anglican Communion and in your opinion would that be something that perhaps needs to happen so you can reform the church here in terms the way gay people are treated. Would you accept that may be a consequence?

AW Well I think you’ve got to ask yourself “what is the global Anglican Communion anyway?” People talk as though it was like Apple Computer, as though Justin was sitting in a big chair stroking a white fluffy cat and saying “Good Evening, Mr Bond.” It’s a Church not an Evil Empire! And actually it's a church where each national expression of Anglicanism has its own integrity and its own independence. It’s not like the British Empire but all run from Lambeth. People sometimes get that wrong. Actually there is no church police, as in Monty Python. We don't have a church police because we're not that sort of an organisation. Leadership in the church is not about forcing your will on people. It’s servant leadership modelled on what we see in Jesus. He came to serve not to be served. So when people say, “why doesn't the global Anglican church get itself into a single position on this?” it isn’t going to happen because the cultures of the world we’re right now are very diverse on this question. We bring those cultures into the ways we read the Bible. We bring those cultures and the people we are into our feelings about one another. You're not going to find a single line that will satisfy or express what everybody is about with gay people.

AB That being said, though, Bishop, I imagine the majority of churchgoing Christians, young people, those who just go and say their prayers at night  if they see on the news maybe on Wednesday that these primates have walked out of these talks because of the gay issue, that sends out a pretty bad message in terms of what you’re hoping can come out of this, doesn’t it?

AW Well it does. I once had a phone call, as a Bishop, from someone who had walked out of a church council meeting in high dudgeon, and they'd forgotten that they were actually in their own house. So they found themselves in their front garden at 11 o'clock at night without a key to get back in again. So they phoned the Bishop… I feel rather sorry for that person. When you've walked out, what you do next? What are you walking into? Wouldn’t it be better to stay and talk? Jesus brings together heaven and earth — everything reconciled in him, says Paul. Don't you think we could try that way instead of all the showboating politics and stuff that goes on in the world? I'd like to feel that we could, and I hope and pray that we can this week.

AB Finally Bishop, if nothing comes out of this meeting it turns out to be a bit of a damp squib for gay Christians how will they feel come Friday afternoon?

AW Well, I think gay Christians have really been through the wringer in England over the last 30 or 40 years because people talk about but they don't talk with them as equals in Christ and I would hope that even though our letter may not entirely transform the church it will be a step towards the full acceptance of our Lesbian and Gay Christian sisters and brothers as equal sharers in the Christian enterprise with us as fellow disciples, as people whom we are equal with in the sight of God and if it expresses that central conviction, then I think it would have been a good thing.

And here, just for the record, are some interesting tips from the Great Man himself:

“Fame can take interesting men and thrust mediocrity upon them.” 

“I'm always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take what I am seriously.”  

“The only real failure is trying to second-guess the taste of an audience. Nothing comes out of that except a kind of inward humiliation.” 

“Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have.”  

“There's a terror in knowing what the world is about.”  

“Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming.”

Ins and Outs and Same-Sex Marriage

Thanks to those who have told me they have missed this blog. Now that same sex marriage is a reality in this country, I have been off writing a book to help resource a Christian response to its challenges and possibiities. It's an attempt to work out some scientific, moral, Biblical, legal, historical, cultural and missional positives now that gay people can marry.

The church has arrived at another round of shared conversations. In my optimistic moments I'd like to think that after thirty years of going round and round in circles about sexuality we could be getting somewhere. I wanted to produce something grounded in Scripture, tradition and reason, to capture the possibilities as they appear right now.

In my less optimistic moments I wonder why we are so uniquely hung up about sexuality. When I was ordained the Church was a comparatively compassionate and safe place for all. The end of “Don't Ask Don't Tell” has got us to a place where things are actually worse for gay clergy. Every ten years or so of the 35 I have been ordained we have held portentous conversations and listening exercises but nobody seems to heard anything and as the pattern repeats, everyone else has moved on. One wag recently quoted me Proverbs 26:11 about this — "As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools return to their folly." We really do have to punch our way out of this paper bag this time.

Meanwhile, in publication week I experience a phenomenon all preachers do — In the course of your killer sermon on the Trinity you tell a joke about something that happened to you in Croydon high street and all anyone wants to talk to you about afterwards is Croydon. In the book I articulated the drearily obvious and well known fact that a fair number of bishops in the past and present have been, in fact, gay. These people have particular vulnerabilities. This has inaugurated a furious spat on twitter with Peter Ould I have no integrity if I don't report all names to him forthwith. Curiously he's also written a piece pointing out the wrongness and futility of outing bishops, so I've no idea why he's so angry with me for not doing it. So here, for the record, is why I don't and won't out people.

What matters to me is the fact that bishops have a range of sexual orientations including gay, not which bishops have what. Which particular bishops are Saggitarian, left-handed or red-haired? I know not in detail, neither do I care. I can, however, understand that curiosity about this is greater than it would be for a group of people who did not set themselves up as professionally straight whilst behaving in discriminatory ways towards gay people. Why not, someone asked me, just put everyone out of their misery and name names?

(1) Me no expert. I have not undertaken detailed postgraduate research about bishops' sexuality. I have had all kinds of conversations with all kinds of people, including bishops, often on terms that exclude leaking personal information about this or anything else. There are journalists out there with far better and more accurate information than mine which is anecdotal and incidental. But I long for the day we are grown up enough for this to be a non-subject. Let's make it now.

(2) On a Meta level, Outing legitimates assumptions I believe are profoundly wrong. It assumes there's something wrong with being gay. It belongs to the world in which I grew up, of shame and guilt. If being gay is not an objective disorder and there's nothing to be ashamed of, its rationale collapses, inviting the response "your point being..."

(3) Peoples' Sexual identity and orientation is a significant part of who they are — that's the basis for my argument that the Church needs to stop being ambiguous about the full human dignity of gay people. If this is true it is always abusive to disrespect anyone's right to hold their own identity. In a world where people take responsibility for their own feelings and identities, outing is out.

(4) Time was a story about a high court judge, military officer or MP who was gay would have been big potatoes, but those days are gone except for bishops. We set ourselves up for this kind of prurience. The remedy lies in our own hands. As long as the House of Bishops continues to victimise gay clergy and ordinands, we have a problem.

People have asked about the process of shared conversations last week. We were encouraged the share the experience, but of course, to respect the confidences of others by not attributing anything.

The facilitation was excellent and the bishops, individually and in threes, as honest and engaging as any people you might hope to meet. Facilitation was state-of-the-art. En masse, however, the story was different. The oddest part was where four professionally gay (but not in too angular a way) people were lined up to present their stories to 110 professionally un-gay people, as though the human beings involved were some kind of other species. That geometry felt ultimately dishonest and degrading to everyone involved. It doesn't matter the slightest who is who, but the professional pretence that no bishop is gay reproduces in the room the reason the Church, almost alone among public institutions these days, is so stuck about this.

Many drew attention to the cognitive dissonance between pastoral practice and theory right now. One or two even used the obvious "H" word. The Church must be do better if we are to fulfil our overriding mission to bring the grace and truth of Christ to this generation and make him known to those in our care. Right now what's on offer is rather like one of those time share or bank adverts where the small print at the bottom says “Terms and restrictions Apply.” The love of God is bigger than this. You may say it was ever thus. Jesus walked into the room and outcasts were healed, whilst the scribes and pharisees sat at the back being snide about his disregard of the small print and plotting how to get rid of him. I know where I belong in that scene, and where the Church should be. Right now we've got this wrong, and we have to change. We have to follow Christ, not Caiaphas.

If shared conversations are to bear fruit we bishops require a higher degree of corporate truthfulness than we have achieved yet. But if we did achieve it, and the individual truthfulness I experienced at times in Market Bosworth was a great sign of hope, what other good results might come for the Church and, perhaps, the peace and salvation of the world?