from Anglican Futures
Anglican Futures is very grateful to the Bishop of Leicester, Martyn Snow, for inviting us to host a response from him to our blog, ‘What kind of future awaits the faithful?’. This is just the kind of open discussion which Anglican Futures encourages.
I am grateful to Anglican Futures for reviewing my booklet, ‘Can we Imagine a Future Together? Intercultural Lessons for Living in Love and Faith’. The review is thoughtful and constructive, and they are kind enough to offer words of personal encouragement to me – I have indeed spent many hours on Living in Love and Faith (LLF) and heard much pain and anger!
And yet the opening analysis is that the booklet “offers little hope” for faithful Anglicans.
Unsurprisingly, I take issue with this, not least because I have also received feedback from other “faithful Anglicans” (similarly conservative on issues of human sexuality) saying that the booklet has caused them to think more deeply and to re-engage with a subject about which they have become hugely frustrated. Obviously, it all depends on what you regard as a good outcome to the LLF process!
So, the central premise of my booklet is that there is hope on offer to those who want change and those who don’t. Under the current proposals (now with Diocesan Synods for consultation), those who hold to the current (traditional) view of marriage and sexual intimacy, will find that very little will change. They will not have to participate in the use of Prayers of Love and Faith, neither will they have to endorse the use of the Prayers. Since the proposal is to introduce the Prayers under Canon B5: “Of the discretion of ministers in the conduct of public prayer” each individual minister will have freedom of conscience. So the Reformation principle of conscience, which was so important to Luther and others, remains a fundamental principle.
This is more significant than many might realise. There is great pressure in our society to accept all liberal, progressive values (although President Trump is rapidly reversing this in the USA!) And it is a fine line between holding particular beliefs and expressing them in a way which is a viewed as discriminatory (see recent court cases where employees have claimed unfair dismissal). Whatever the right or wrong of this, the Church of England’s current proposals mean that ministers who hold to ‘traditional values’ and refuse to use the PLF will be protected. Our clearly stated position will be that ministers are free to use the Prayers or not, according to their conscience and we will defend both sets of ministers against any attempt at coercion. This may not sound like much to readers of Anglican Futures, but I can assure you that there are ministers in other parts of the world who have not received this level of protection – their denomination has basically left them to face the courts alone.
However, the review goes on to argue that the only way the booklet can offer hope to all is through an acceptance of plural truth. The reviewer nuances this by stating that they accept that I hold to a higher view of Scripture than many in the Church of England, but still they imply that I am refusing to sit under Scripture and arguing that the church can accept different doctrines of marriage. I want to unpack this argument because for all its simple appeal (rejecting pluralism and sitting under Scripture), I think they have misunderstood my argument.