by Michael Hayden, Psephizo
Bishop Martyn Snow, Lead Bishop for LLF, has just published a booklet. The challenge is in the title: can we possibly imagine a future in which we can stay together in the Church of England—or is it time to give up and separate? Bishop Martyn has spent a considerable amount of time and effort in the past year trying argue that the time to separate hasn’t yet come, and this booklet is his proposed way forward.
The booklet begins with an analogy from couple’s therapy: when the two parties in a relationship are asking whether they can remain together, the therapist cannot make them stay together—(s)he can only ask them whether they can possibly imagine doing so. If they can’t, separation is the only option.
The problem with the analogy is that +Martyn is not a neutral therapist in this scenario. He is the Lead Bishop for LLF, a process which has caused massive division and a breakdown of trust at every level of the national church. If we stick with the marriage analogy, it’s more akin to one spouse having an affair and then telling the other, ‘I don’t think this is worth separating over!’ +Martyn might claim to be ‘personally orthodox,’ but he is spearheading the push for heterodoxy. He is not neutral, and he does not get to tell those opposed to his proposals how upset we are allowed to be.
Snow draws on his experience as Bishop of Leicester, a city that has put much thought into multiculturalism. He believes that there are lessons from interculturalism that might help us stay together in a divided Church of England.
What are the lessons he wants to share with us? Well, there is a very brief outline of the history of assimilation (the minority culture must learn to be subsumed into the majority/host culture), multiculturalism (multiple cultures living alongside each other but not bridging their differences), and interculturalism (multiple cultures engaging in dialogue across difference). Though he concedes the issues are not the same, he would have us adopt an ‘intercultural’ mindset towards our theological differences.
In this, he tries to be realistic that we’re not going to agree any time soon. Indeed, we may never agree on these matters. That’s an honest, if depressing, admission. What struck me, however, was that +Martyn doesn’t seem to be depressed by the situation. Indeed, he comes very close to celebrating our theological divisions.