(How) should we engage with Living in Love and Faith?
by Ian Paul, Psephizo:
This week saw the publication of the material in the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) project of the Church of England. The result of nearly three years’s work by a series of working groups under a coordinating group led by Chris Cocksworth, bishop of Coventry, it arose from the refusal by General Synod to ‘take note’ of a statement by the House of Bishops which prompted the archbishops to call for a ‘radical new Christian inclusion rooted in Scripture and historic Christian teaching’. It comprises a main book of some 480 pages (though the layout is very open, so it is not as long as it looks), a study booklet, and a whole series of videos which explore the issues around sexuality and faith from a wide range of perspectives. The content will take some time to digest; although individual book chapters are available online to download for free, the whole book is not, and I have yet to receive my own printed copy.
In this piece, I don’t want to comment on the content itself (though I have read some sections, and from this sampling would agree with a view from outside the Church of England that it is something of a proverbial curate’s egg), but on the context in which we find ourselves. In doing this, I don’t want to be negative or disparaging; a lot of people have put an enormous about of time and effort into producing this, and I think it is possible that they have produced something unusual and even unique in enabling a level of respectful engagement that does not happen often in the discussions on this subject.
But I do want to be realistic, and so I am here offering five observations about the context that we are in, because I think these form, in their different ways, an understanding of the dynamic that will shape the outcome of future discussion.
LLF’s surrealist theology bodes ill for Evangelical Anglicans by Julian Mann, Anglican Ink
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