The Church of England will not split over gay sex.
If it splits, it will do so over the authority of Scripture. It is one of the failures of the LLF journey thus far that this is still barely understood. Many people believe that it is homophobia pure and simple that prevents progress in this area. After all, have we not long ceased to treat the Bible as the word of God, departing from it when we felt it was in need of correction? Why not do so now? Surely it is just bigotry that leads some to cling to the words of Scripture in the area of sexuality.
It is undeniable that there are many in the CofE, including many clergy, who do not consider the Bible to be the authoritative word of God in the way those did who wrote our Christian confessions of faith and devised our historic liturgies. A good few among them perhaps really do not realise that there are others within the CofE, including clergy, who still believe the Holy Scriptures to be ‘God’s word written’ (Article 20 of the 39 Articles) and who seek to submit to the teaching of the Bible, read carefully in the light of how it has been understood throughout church history (tradition) and informed by biblical scholarship (reason).
Some of those who have departed from this understanding of Scripture know that there are others within the CofE who have not done so but they expect that ‘traditionalists’ will continue to tolerate departures from Scripture within the CofE, given that they have done so in other areas, unless in this case their homophobia prevents it. This overlooks something crucial. To take one example, ‘revisionists’ may well allow for remarriage after divorce because they think of themselves as more compassionate than the sound of the words on the lips of Jesus in the Gospel but ‘traditionalists’ fall into two groups – a smaller one (I believe) who considers this wrong but tolerates it because the official teaching of the CofE is still that marriage is life-long and the liturgy has not been changed, and a larger one (I believe) who allow for remarriage after divorce in some circumstances because Jesus did, and who consider the twentieth century changes within the CofE a belated return to Scripture (belated, because all other reformed churches had done so during the Reformation period).
It is true that ‘traditionalists’ by and large have been very tolerant within the last hundred years or so, as the CofE in practice abandoned conformity to a doctrinal standard, but this tolerance was facilitated by the absence of changes to the official teaching or liturgy of the church which enshrined a departure from, say, Article 20 of the 39 Articles. It would be a different matter if the teaching of the BCP had to be suspended to drop the diversity-sex requirement of marriage or if the claim that ‘no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the Commandments which are called Moral’ were qualified to make space for a sexual morality which is no longer circumscribed by Scripture.
It is not gay sex that will split the church; it is irreconcilable views about how we discern God’s will which will split the church if it splits.
