Working Group on Human Sexuality
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IssuesTEXTwithoutPreface.qxp:Resourcbishops.qxp 20/11/2013 11:35 Page i The House of Bishops Working Group on human sexuality Published in book & ebook formats by Church House Publishing Available now from www.chpublishing.co.uk IssuesTEXTwithoutPreface.qxp:Resourcbishops.qxp 20/11/2013 11:35 Page ii Published in book & ebook formats by Church House Publishing Available now from www.chpublishing.co.uk IssuesTEXTwithoutPreface.qxp:Resourcbishops.qxp 20/11/2013 11:35 Page iii Report of the House of Bishops Working Group on human sexuality November 2013 Published in book & ebook formats by Church House Publishing Available now from www.chpublishing.co.uk IssuesTEXTwithoutPreface.qxp:Resourcbishops.qxp 20/11/2013 11:35 Page iv Church House Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this Church House publication may be reproduced or Great Smith Street stored or transmitted by any means London or in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, SW1P 3AZ recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without written permission, which should be sought ISBN 978 0 7151 4437 4 (Paperback) from [email protected] 978 0 7151 4438 1 (CoreSource EBook) 978 0 7151 4439 8 (Kindle EBook) Unless otherwise indicated, the Scripture quotations contained GS 1929 herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright Published 2013 for the House © 1989, by the Division of Christian of Bishops of the General Synod Education of the National Council of the Church of England by Church of the Churches of Christ in the USA, House Publishing. and are used by permission. All rights reserved. Copyright © The Archbishops’ Council 2013 iv Published in book & ebook formats by Church House Publishing Available now from www.chpublishing.co.uk IssuesTEXTwithoutPreface.qxp:Resourcbishops.qxp 20/11/2013 11:35 Page v Contents Foreword vii Prologue ‘Living with holiness and desire’ by the Revd Dr Jessica Martin ix Part 1 Introduction The establishment, membership and work of the group 1 A rapidly changing context 10 Listening to each other – and continuing to do so 15 The obligations of belonging to the Anglican Communion 23 The current teaching of the Church of England 28 Part 2 Summarizing the evidence Sexuality, culture and Christian ethics 39 Sexuality and social trends 47 Homophobia 54 Arguments about science 59 Arguments about Scripture 67 Perspectives from two theologians 75 Part 3 Reflecting on the evidence Christian ethics – the Anglican tradition 83 Scripture and theology 90 Countering prejudice and homophobia 94 Science, society and demographics 97 A process for listening to each other 103 Published in book & ebook formats by Church House Publishing v Available now from www.chpublishing.co.uk IssuesTEXTwithoutPreface.qxp:Resourcbishops.qxp 20/11/2013 11:35 Page vi Contents The Church’s practice 107 A Dissenting Statement by the Bishop of Birkenhead 119 Part 4 Findings and recommendations 149 Appendices Appendix 1 Members of the Working Group 153 Appendix 2 Evidence received by the group 154 Appendix 3 Keith Sinclair, Bishop of Birkenhead, ‘Scripture and same sex relationships’ 158 Appendix 4 David Runcorn, ‘Evangelicals, Scripture and same sex relationships – an ‘Including Evangelical’ perspective’ 176 Notes 196 vi Published in book & ebook formats by Church House Publishing Available now from www.chpublishing.co.uk IssuesTEXTwithoutPreface.qxp:Resourcbishops.qxp 20/11/2013 11:35 Page vii Foreword None of us involved with the work of this group was unaware of how difficult a subject we were asked to tackle when the work began. Our expectation that it would be – in management jargon – challenging has been met. In the end we have not been able to achieve a unanimous report. But the experience has left us feeling more positive than we might have expected. It has been a privilege to listen to deeply personal accounts of Christian lives lived with same sex attraction. We have all learned and been changed by the experience and by other aspects of the group’s work. We have been conscious of large numbers of people praying for us and for our work. The subject is more divisive than just two perspectives might suggest. I doubt if there are any two of us who agree in every detail on the ground we have covered. Against that background, it is encouraging that our meetings have been marked by honesty and openness and by love and respect. Our disagreements have been explored in the warmth of a shared faith. To that extent, prayers have been answered and we are grateful to God. We have relied heavily on the staff team throughout. All of them had other heavy commitments but they have been unstinting in serving us. Malcolm Brown and Martin Davie attended all our meetings, took minutes, wrote papers and drafted much the greater part of the report. Lauren Fenn, and then Caroline Kim, have made all the arrangements for our meetings with unfailing efficiency and good humour. We decided at our first meeting to ask three people to be our advisers. From the second meeting onwards they have taken a full part in the work and the members of the group cannot imagine how we would have managed without them. The group decided that the best way to reflect the way we have worked was to ask our advisers to sign the report. They graciously agreed. Published in book & ebook formats by Church House Publishing vii Available now from www.chpublishing.co.uk IssuesTEXTwithoutPreface.qxp:Resourcbishops.qxp 20/11/2013 11:35 Page viii Foreword One of our advisers, Jessica Martin, challenged us to think about human sexuality more widely than most of our evidence was leading us to do. We asked her to write a paper which now forms the prologue to the report. We wanted to give others a chance to read it and reflect on it and we feared that, if we tried to integrate it into the main body of the report, much would be lost. Joe Pilling Chair of the Working Group November 2013 x Published in book & ebook formats by Church House Publishing Available now from www.chpublishing.co.uk IssuesTEXTwithoutPreface.qxp:Resourcbishops.qxp 20/11/2013 11:35 Page ix Prologue Living with holiness and desire The Revd Dr Jessica Martin The beginning Desire begins and ends with God. We who are creatures recognize our incompleteness, through desiring when we do not possess – and we yearn towards the holy when we hope for what we cannot see.1 The created universe we inhabit is filled with promise, and our human lives with promises, both human and divine.2 Everything we are and everything we do has a holy thread of promise running through it, and we do not know yet what we shall be.3 But, whatever it is, through God’s grace, that we may become, we have some distance yet to get there. Sin, death and damage are fundamental to the world into which we are born, and they make us darker and more sorrowful entities than any innocent creature looking trustfully towards its maker for fulfilment.4 We are violently separated from the source of our being. Why we have this tragic inheritance is beyond our understanding, but something of its meaning speaks in the narrative of the Fall with which the Scriptures begin.5 That’s one true thing. But at the same time there is another true thing about our humanity, which is that here and now, in our mortal bodies and particular histories, God is with us.6 God breathes within the human condition in the person and history of Jesus. Because of his birth every birth is a fulfilment as well as a nascent hope, every moment has a completion as well as a potential, the promise of every relationship is holy as well as local and mortal.7 Because of Jesus’ bitter suffering unto death and because he was raised from death, every piece of degrading damage may be transformed and redeemed, every sin forgiven, every death made the occasion of new life.8 It is holy to be human because everything about being human, its loss and its splendour, is saturated with God. Published in book & ebook formats by Church House Publishing ix Available now from www.chpublishing.co.uk IssuesTEXTwithoutPreface.qxp:Resourcbishops.qxp 20/11/2013 11:35 Page x Prologue The Scriptures speak of God reaching out towards his separated creatures and bringing them back into intimacy with him: ‘the kingdom of God has come near’.9 This is a gift of love.10 Sometimes it is imagined as the relation of parent and child11 (adopted12 or natural13), sometimes as the relation of spouse with spouse,14 sometimes of sibling with sibling,15 sometimes of friend with friend.16 These are incomplete analogies, the analogies of promise, and like all rich comparisons they are fruitful and alive exactly because they are incomplete. Each expresses a human bond in which a promise meets a gift (or, at any rate, the nearest we humans can come to a gift). No real relationship, and no particular kind of relationship, is fully identified with our divine bond – or fully separated from it either. In every human encounter where a promise meets a gift, there is God, offering to change its meaning with his presence.17 The promise of God which is our hope, and the promises which found and direct our living in time and society are intimately joined together. When we make the promises of human relationship we are also on holy ground.18 Here and now Augustine of Hippo (whose influence upon modern Western understandings of fallenness and desire is difficult to overstate) sees in the restless longing heart an impulse which might in the end toss us towards the divine embrace.19 His famous insight sees desire as the place of possibility – a creative place, perhaps a place under pressure, but not one of gratification.