Bishops: Pastoral?

The Church of England’s House of Bishops (The Diocesan Bishops, The Archbishops, and a few Suffragan Bishops) has issued a ‘pastoral statement’ on ‘Civil Partnerships – for same sex and opposite sex couples’. It is a ‘statement’, but is hardly pastoral. It relegates any relationship outside the traditional marriage between a man and a woman to a second, or even a third tier of relationships, and sets them in the context, almost exclusively, of sexual intercourse. In fact, the Statement is more about episcopal power and control than it is about caring for anyone. And coming in the middle of a ‘consultation’ process (Living in Love and Faith), it would seem to void the process (not the first time this has happened): the conclusions have already been reached, no matter what else happens. Small wonder it has been derided by almost everyone and provoked a huge negative reaction on social media.

The statement itself is written in a way that brooks no discussion: that’s what a statement is. That even those bishops who know what pastoral care is have signed up to this shows both the level of fear within which they operate and the control they (especially the Archbishops) would like to have over the conversation (it appears it was a ‘deemed’ item on their agenda). However, the genie of sex and changing understandings of human love (which the report doesn’t even mention) is out of the bottle, and no amount of attempting to get the cork back in is going to make even one tiny bit of difference to the wider conversation.

A few bishops have said that they were disappointed with the timing and the ‘coldness’ of the statement, though only a couple have actually said that it doesn’t speak for them. The problem, however, is not with the timing or even with the ‘coldness’ of the statement. The problem lies in some of the assumptions it makes.

The first assumption is that anyone cares what the bishops have to say about sex. People I know in civil partnerships or even same sex marriages are universally unlikely to look to the bishops for guidance in their relationship. This is a matter of credibility. These are, after all, the same bishops who have been pretty silent in the wake of the revelations (already widely known anyway) about Peter Ball, the IICSA hearings, the unwillingness of the bishops to accept outside and independent help in safeguarding, the way the church sought to cover up abuse, and to protect itself and its own.

The second assumption is that there is only one understanding of marriage in the Church of England or even in the Christian tradition (now, or even in the past) and that by re-iterating one version of that understanding the arguments about marriage, sex, relationships, and even civil partnerships will go away. If the first assumption has a touch of hubris about it, this second one has a bit of naivety about it. What bright spark came up with the idea that a randomly timed ‘statement’ might end a conversation that has its own momentum?

A Third assumption is that ‘doctrine’ trumps experience, when the theological truth is that doctrine has always arisen out of experience (something our Methodist sisters and brothers could help us with). The uncomfortable truth for some – perhaps even for bishops – is that as experience has changed, so has doctrine; or at least it has for some – for others, no amount of experience or new knowledge will ever change anything. This has a touch of the ‘head in the sand’ approach to the world and God and human life.

The major difference this ‘pastoral’ statement has made to anything has been to the credibility of the House of Bishops, and, by extension, to the credibility of the mission of the Church of England. What little credibility the bishops had following the Peter Ball revelations has been shredded, and the distance between the church and the rest of the world has grown.

Once upon a time, the church believed in a living God, active in and through the world. This led to various times when the ideas and discoveries of that work of God in and through the world changed the way we understood or did things. This no longer seems to be the case. Selected earlier moments get frozen in a kind of theological aspic; become like a Jurassic bug caught in a bit of amber never to be changed. And it’s not just the church’s understanding of human sexual relationships that has been wrapped in aspic: the very structure and understanding of the church, with petty episcopal fiefdoms, arcane and unstable decision-making, ungenerous attitudes to those on the ground doing the actual work, and disciplinary processes that owe more to Kafka than modern human resources best practice has too. This is unsustainable, and you don’t need the Church of England’s statistics department to see it.

On the positive side, the ‘statement’ has unleashed a veritable flood of support for Christians in same-sex marriages or civil partnerships; perhaps not its intended consequence, but positive none-the-less. And also positively, few seem willing to defend it.

Jonathan Draper,

General Secretary of Modern Church