Traditional or Revisionist – LGBTI+ Anglicans and the Teaching Document – a history
by Colin Coward, Unadulterated Love blog:
Is the House of Bishops ready to make evolutionary and revolutionary choices about the direction in which the Church of England’s teachings about gender and sexuality will evolve? Jesus was an evolutionary and revolutionary prophet and mystic. How about our bishops?
The key question about the Teaching Document for LGBTI+ members of the Church of England is: will this report achieve the radical change we now urgently need, both we who identify as LGBTI and the majority in the church for whom current teaching and practice is no longer adequate or believable?
The Episcopal Teaching Document due to be published in 2020 will be the seventh substantive report or document on homosexuality written in just over six decades. Not all were published.
I have read through the previous six reports and GS Misc 1168 which outlines the agenda for the new Teaching Document. I wanted to trace the development of thinking to see if the latest attempt gives us grounds for optimism.
Inflationary tendency
With the exception of Issues in Human Sexuality and Pilling there has been a tendency for each successive report to expand in length, from 32 pages in 1967, 94 in 1979, 146 in 1987, 48 in 1991 (Issues bucking the trend), 358 in 2003, and 201 in 2013 (Pilling still the second longest). One look at the specification for the new Teaching Document suggests this will be lengthy. No previous report has attempted to cover so much territory.
Read also: The Government’s LGBT+ Action Plan and the Church of England’s systemic homophobia
The Rev Colin Coward is the founder and former Director of Changing Attitude
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