Living with Disagreement

Disagreement about the teaching of marriage and sexual intimacy is arguably more serious than, e.g., the disagreements between Presbyterians and Anglicans. It is therefore not one more disagreement which we can add to the list of secondary matters on which we "agree to disagree" and move on. If a revised understanding of what it means to be chaste is embedded in pastoral guidance and/or official prayers, it cannot but do substantial harm to our unity. 

The Bishop of London believes that God is calling us to live with our current disagreements. The reasoning she offered to General Synod in February for having reached this conclusion seemed specious to me but here I want to make the point that believing that God calls us to live with our disagreements does not yet resolve the question how we are to live with these disagreements. There are perhaps three options for the moment, none of whom especially attractive:

(1) continuing as before, namely tolerating the revisionist teaching and (unofficial) practice of blessing same-sex couples without changing our doctrine or the prayers we commend or the moral requirements we put on clergy and others,

(2) creating structural space for "two integrities" with different approaches to Scripture and different understandings of sin and repentance, the Gospel and the Christian life,

(3) welcoming revisionist views as consonant with Anglican teaching and making liturgical space for these new understandings of living out our sexuality while keeping, for now, the marriage canon in place in the hope that the relevant parties are prepared to make the required sacrifices (revisionists foregoing "marriage equality" for now, traditionalists accepting that revisionism is properly Anglican too).

Sarah Mullally favours the last option but this is deeply problematic because very many who hold to the traditional view of marriage feel unable to bring the sacrifice asked of them. My preference is for the second option in the form of creating a separate legal space for those who want to promote a changed understanding of marriage and sexuality. This would be challenging because numerous legal issues would need to be resolved but it has the advantage of preserving integrity. It is not a refusal to live with our current disagreements but rather a (better) way to live with them. Alas, the discussion seems to be cut short by the insinuation that being called to live with our disagreements necessarily means to walk in the way the Bishops lead us, abandoning the normativity of previous teaching.

LLF and London Synod

The London Diocesan Synod on Wednesday 22 March 2023, with a dedicated session on Living in Love and Faith (LLF). The report is sobering. It perpetuates the mischaracterisation of those who are compelled to resist the new teaching as purists who cannot bear disagreement:

There are those who believe that our unity as Christians depends on our agreement on certain doctrinal issues, including those around sex and sexuality. Then there are those who believe that unity is possible and desirable even if we disagree.

But surely ALL of us believe that our unity as Christians depends on our agreement on certain doctrinal issues. The question is whether these doctrinal issues include teaching around marriage and sexual intimacy. And surely ALL of us believe that unity is possible and desirable even if we disagree. The question is whether our disagreements around marriage and sexual intimacy fall in the category of disagreements which we can accommodate or in the category of disagreements that cannot be reconciled within the same structures.  

The Church of England does not ordain Presbyterians or Baptists, even if we do not deny that they are fellow members of the body of Christ. We thereby acknowledge that there are disagreements which lead to structural differentiation. The mischaracterisation of the situation is very discouraging because it reveals a failure to listen and to ask the right questions.

Other statements made suggest serious deficiencies in understanding church history. Every heresy within the church has been argued from scripture. The statement that “both of these approaches can be argued from scripture” is therefore vacuous.

The claim that “the Church of England has always been an intentionally and uniquely broad church” sits uneasily with the fact that close to 2,500 clergy were expelled from the Church of England following the 1662 Act of Uniformity. It is only in modern times that we begun to abandon the principle that what we believe and how we worship must conform to a canonical standard and even then nonconformity is tolerated in some areas but not in others.

The observation that clergy will be free to choose whether or not to use the prayers is not at all reassuring because this freedom of conscience treats the question what it means to be chaste as one of indifference when it comes to being a loyal Anglican. It is not only a further step towards the privatisation of religion but a rejection of the belief that the revisionist teaching about marriage and sexual intimacy is not in agreement with Scripture and not consonant with Anglican teaching and tradition.