Sexuality review will not pronounce on the rights or wrongs of same-sex marriage

Jan 4, 2019 by

by Paul Handley, Church Times:

THE group commissioned by the Archbishops to look into sexuality will not pronounce on the rights or wrongs of same-sex marriage. But neither is it engaged merely on a mapping exercise of the different views that exist, or burying the issue in the long grass.

“Perhaps what we’re doing has never been done before,” the Bishop of Coventry, Dr Christopher Cocksworth, said shortly before Christmas, speaking in his office in Coventry. Dr Cocksworth chairs the co-ordinating group that oversees the 40-odd scholars working in thematic teams covering theology, history, biblical studies, and science.

The project was announced in June 2017 (News, 30 June 2017), shortly after an earlier report from the House of Bishops was given a hostile reception in the General Synod (News, 15 February 2017). A significant shift came early on, when the title of the project became “Living in Love and Faith: Christian teaching about human identity, sexuality and marriage”.

For a project that has sexuality at its heart, those involved use very unsexy language. “The intention of the Archbishops,” Dr Cocksworth said, “and that which the bishops need and that which the teams of people involved are most able to supply, is what I have described as a pedagogical process — in other words, it is helping people to learn how to think, and how to better understand.

“I think it would be fair to say that this has wrong-footed some people. It is not in itself a decision-making process. It will rather be a pedagogical process that will help to put the Church, and the Bishops in particular, in the sort of position by which they can develop whatever answers to particular questions are needed. And if we do it well, some of those answers may begin to emerge through this learning process itself.

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