The story of the Church of England’s agonies over sexuality, and in particular the place it gives to LGBT people and their relationships seems never-ending. It is easy to lose the thread. Here is the short version: 

The 1980s

• The Osborne Report (1989) takes evidence from gay and lesbian people
• The Higton Motion (1987) undercuts Osborne’s work and opposes any accommodation with LGBT people – their relationships are wrong and sex outside of heterosexual marriage is forbidden. LGBT people should be met with a call to repentance and compassion.

The 1990s

• The House of Bishops publishes Issues in Human Sexuality (1991). This ‘contribution to a
  debate’ rapidly assumes the character of Holy Writ. All candidates for ordination and all clergy are held to its teaching: lay people may have relationships, but clergy may not
• By the end of the decade, the south of the Anglican Communion was becoming more exercised by signs of acceptance of homosexuality. Their views were supported by extreme groups like Anglican Mainstream, funded by shadowy American evangelical money

The 2000s

• The Jeffrey John affair (2003). Jeffrey John, gay and partnered, is appointed Bishop of Reading. After a huge protest by evangelicals, he is persuaded to stand aside by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams
• The consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in the Episcopal Church (2003). While the consecration of Jeffrey John was stopped, that of Gene Robinson was not, despite many proptests from outside the Episcopal Church
• Some Issues in Human Sexuality (2003) – a further reflection from the House of Bishops adding nothing to the debate but a call to listen and learn together.
• Civil Partnerships (2005) are introduced in the England and Wales in the teeth of episcopal opposition.

The 2010s

• Recognising that Issues was now over twenty years old, the House of Bishops commission the Pilling Report (2013). This proposes facilitated conversations to try and find a way forward. 
• Meanwhile the coalition government publishes an act to make same-sex marriage legal. This is passed in July 2013 and comes into force in March 2014. The Act passes through both Houses of Parliament easily. The bishops are fiercely opposed to it and seem wrong-footed when they find that they are very much in a minority. Same-sex marriages in Church of England churches are illegal and void. 
• The Valentine’s Day Statement (2014) provides the House of Bishops’ Pastoral Guidance regarding the imminent same-sex marriages. It disapproves of lay people marrying and says of ordinands and clergy; “The House is not, therefore, willing for those who are in a same sex marriage to be ordained to any of the three orders of ministry. In addition, it considers that it would not be appropriate conduct for someone in holy orders to enter into a same sex marriage, given the need for clergy to model the Church’s teaching in their lives.
• Shared conversations (2015) following on from Pilling take place across the church
• The bishops’ response to the Conversations is published (2017). General Synod refuses to take note of it. This is a very serious set back.
• The whole Living in Love and Faith process is set up (2018). First a large teaching document is prepared, then used to encourage engagement in dioceses, deaneries and parishes. This is extended by the COVID pandemic

The 2020s

• Coming out of the Living in Love and Faith process the Synod of February 2023 passes motions that look forward to liturgical provision for LGBT people (Prayers of Love and Faith), the suppression of Issues and a change to the pastoral guidance of 2015. 
• The rest of the year is spent by conservative evangelicals and others trying to push back towards what they see as a biblically faithful line.

That is a sketch of thirty-six years of going round and round in circles. Nothing, formally speaking, has changed. However, the world has moved on. LGBT people are much more like to be out, confident and articulate. It is no longer a shameful or fearful thing to be gay or lesbian bisexual or transgendered. Many clergy now openly support LGBT issues, attend PRIDE marches, and make sure that their churches are known as a safe space for LGBT people. The country is more and more horrified and revolted by a Church that hugs to itself the right to discriminate on the grounds of sexuality.

The latest twist in this very convoluted tale is that a document GS 2328 Living in Love and Faith: Setting out the progress made and work still to do has been prepared for the November session of Synod in three weeks. For those of us onlooking this is a very muddled document with two significant disappointments within it. First of all, the Prayers of Love and Faith are mealy-mouthed and mean-spirited – in order to get them through the prayers don’t just simply pray for God’s blessing on a same-sex couple and on their relationship but makes clear that is not what is happening. The individuals in the relationship are being blessed ‘on their journey’. This is, frankly, insulting. The second disappointment is that the revision of the pastoral guidance has been pushed down the line until 2025.

It is hard to avoid gaining the impression that, contrary to what the archbishops told us in 2017, LGBT people are a problem, that we are not wanted, that elaborate games are being played to fob us off with something to keep us quiet. I have now lost count of the good Christian people I know who have walked away from the Church of England because of its attitude of this matter. Their energy, vision, imagination was all sapped by the explicit and implicit rejections they have seen time and time again. It is very hard to hope that Living in Love and Faith and its aftermath will produce anything substantial. This is an opportunity for a change of direction which would be important for what the Church of England by law established says to the nation, and this could be something very positive for a whole minority who have contributed so much to the life of the church, its sustenance and mission for decades. But will it just prove to be more ecclesiastical hot air? Pieties, Anglican passive-aggression against the pushy gays, exclusion, marginalisation, promises of something but no action to deliver it, hand-wringing, being told that this causes “pain on both sides” – as if the experience of LGBT people is somehow equivalent to the pain felt by those who simply don’t like us! 

There are a lot of very angry and frustrated LGBT Anglicans around at the moment. We are writing to our bishops. We have been told that the Church of England has a problem with deference, so some of us are working hard to say it how it is in what we tell the bishops, and not worrying too much about being nice.

This is what I have said to my bishop:

Dear Bishop,

I am writing with my response to the proposals from the House of Bishops regarding Prayers of Love and Faith which are coming before the next meeting of General Synod. You will recall that in 2017, the archbishops had this to say after the refusal of General Synod to take note of the paper on Marriage and Same Sex Relationships after the Shared Conversations (GS 2055);

First, we want to be clear about some underlying principles. In these discussions no person is a problem, or an issue. People are made in the image of God. All of us, without exception, are loved and called in Christ. There are no ‘problems’, there are simply people called to redeemed humanity in Christ.

How we deal with the real and profound disagreement – put so passionately and so clearly by many at the debate – is the challenge we face as people who all belong to Christ.

To deal with that disagreement and to find ways forward, we need a radical new Christian inclusion in the Church. This must be founded in scripture, in reason, in tradition, in theology and the Christian faith as the Church of England has received it; it must be based on good, healthy, flourishing relationships, and in a proper 21st century understanding of being human and of being sexual.

Thereafter we were invited to wait for the publication of Living in Love and Faith, and then to take part in conversations designed to help us to a deeper mutual understanding in the church about human sexuality. Like many LGBT people I participated as fully as I could in those activities, hoping to see some real progress in what we all know is a difficult area for our church.

I found the February meeting of General Synod hopeful, in that, for the very first time ever, the Church of England managed to say something not entirely negative about the lives and loves of LGBT people. I awaited the next steps with interest.

I have to tell you that I am disappointed, angry, frustrated, and distrustful of what has taken place since then. I found the proposed Prayers of Love and Faith patronising and mealy-mouthed, and the latest way of forwarding their use has not helped. The whole process has been a betrayal of what we were promised by the archbishops – a radical new Christian inclusion in the Church. Far from the Living in Love and Faith process heralding this, it is clear that we are still seen as problems, we are second class Christians, we are ‘untouchable’ in that we can have individual blessing for our journeying, but not for our marriages or civil partnerships. There is no sense of welcome or inclusion – on the contrary the whole tenor of the material is about corralling us in some kind of an indeterminate ecclesial outhouse where we can be given some sops to keep us quiet, while not upsetting the people who inhabit the main house. Frankly, no self-respecting person should put up with being treated in this shameful way.

What is even more frustrating is knowing the attitude of CEEC, of which you are a leading part, doing all it can to frustrate the modest provisions that have been proposed, let alone any developments of real significance. CEEC’s hostility to any kind of revision of theological thinking is well known, but it appears that any kind of agreement to differ is beyond that constituency, and the demand for structural division seems calculated to try and push back against what Synod voted for in February. The chances of a restatement of Higton and Issues are nil, and therefore it seems that the talk of illegality is tithing of mint and dill, designed to slow things down. I don’t see in this any kind of love or concern for the members of the Body who are different from you, or the future of our church, or any demonstration of fidelity to Christ.

I want you to understand that I regard this as a significant failure on your part, as a leading member of CEEC, to honour what the archbishops promised us back in 2017. You are not a focus for unity in your diocese but, in taking what to many ordinary Christians now seems an unacceptable position which is neither biblically demonstrable nor pastorally useful, you risk dividing the church. Moreover, it is not simply LGBT Christians who think like this – but many ordinary baptised members of our church locally find your stance bewildering and entirely at odds with the world that they know, and where LGBT people (their family, friends, neighbours, and colleagues) live their lives and make their contribution to society. You know as well as I do that Jesus tells us to test the fruits of people’s lives as a crucial test of their godliness, and even our own archbishop has invited us to recognise the goodness that can be seen in many faithful same-sex relationships. We ought not to say either explicitly or implicitly that good is bad, and bad, good. Of course, many people’s relationships fall far short of this, regardless of their sexuality, but it seems to me perverse to exclude and stigmatise a minority rather than encourage and include them when there is so much that is wrong in the world. 

You may not like what your colleagues are proposing, but, as an LGBT member of your diocese I want to ask you as my bishop, what is your alternative proposal to give to people like me the hope of respect and dignity that all members of the Body of Christ deserve? Any answer that tells us what we can’t have or can’t be is no answer at all. What is your vision for this diocese of the new inclusion we were offered?

I continue to pray for you and for all those in the diocese who will representing the faithful at the meeting of Synod. I hope that some better solutions to our present difficulties may, in the kindness of God, become apparent.

Yours sincerely,

Jeremy