With the start of advent, the church entered a new church year. As the rest of the world catches up it is clear that 2020 is going to be a year with a lot of opportunities and threats. There will be many opportunities, but we must be able to seize those opportunities.
Just to go through some of the ‘highlights’ for 2020:
The Franklin Graham tour starts at the end of May. Tour dates and venues can be accessed here. Sheffield has already been protesting about the planned event in their city. You can read more about this here.
Franklin Graham’s tour is being billed as bringing hope, but he is bringing a very particular brand of Christianity that is not affirming to those of us who are LGBTQ.
In my much younger days I went to see his father Billy Graham on his tours of the UK. I found Billy Graham very impressive in his preaching. He preached a message for everyone, focused on the cross and the Bible and a message that was traditional but not as conservative as I expect the 2020 tour will be.
The Gafcon conference takes place in Kitali Rwanda in early June. More information about this can be found here.
This may not be happening in the UK, but the impact of the conference will be felt here. The organisers of this conference are encouraging bishops worldwide to boycott the Lambeth conference and to attend GAFCON. Those attending the conference have to agree to the Jerusalem Declaration, which can be found here and check out point 8. A key tenet of GAFCON is Lambeth resolution 1.10, which is the only Lambeth resolution given a place on the GAFCON website, where it has a whole page to itself. That page can be accessed here.
Archbishop Justin wants the Lambeth Conference to be a success and early indications are that ‘being a success’ means that a lot of people attend it. Putting bishops in a position where they are encouraged to attend GAFCON and boycott Lambeth is a growing threat to the authority of the archbishop of Canterbury. As GAFCON grows, the possibility of a split in the Anglican communion grows.
The Methodist Conference, where they will be debating (and likely to pass) the resolution to allow Methodist churches to register for same-sex marriages. This takes place at the end of June. The report they are debating can be found here.
There are a number of ancillary documents supporting the report, these can be accessed here. There is a frequently asked questions section that can be accessed here. Other relevant Methodist resources can be accessed from the Marriage and Relationships 2019 page here.
The Methodist work is really impressive and I would encourage everyone to visit their pages and to use the resources there. Not only is their theological approach something that other denominations could benefit from following, but the way that they have thought through how to resource the debate shows a clarity of planning that is often lacking in other church groups.
The Methodists have not started with ‘what does the Bible say about homosexuality?’, but have started with the question of ‘what do good relationships look like?’ As they explore that idea, it leads to a broader view of relationships, families, love, intimacy etc and then they explore what the Bibles says about these broader areas. This gives a quite different emphasis to the Biblical material.
There is also the expectation that Methodists will discuss this locally at all levels before the conference in June. This will not be easy and the Church of England would learn a lot from the Methodists in how to conduct these broad conversations.
I know some local Methodist churches that have already had the discussions and had the votes in their church leadership and if the vote goes through, they are ready and keen to sign up to conduct same-sex marriages as soon as it is available to them.
The Church of England’s Living in Love and Faith project will produce its materials this year. Information about LLF can be found here.
This is the wildcard of 2020. Word on the street is that LLF will produce resources but not make recommendations. That may well annoy both sides and it may well get a negative reception. That will be unfortunate, there is likely to be some progress one way or another. It is likely to give us some of what we want, but it won’t give us everything.
The biggest question will be what happens with those resources? It has been a strategic error on the part of the Church of England hierarchy that they have used the LLF process to shut down any debate on almost anything to do with gender and sexuality. That has led to a lot of frustration and that frustration could come out in a way that the leadership will not like.
The resources are due to be discussed at the General Synod in York on July 10th to 14th (a week after the Methodist conference). I was at the 2017 ‘not taking note’ protest outside Church House at the February 2017 General Synod – will I need to be planning a protest trip to York this summer too?
The 2020 Lambeth Conference takes place in the second half of July. Information about the conference can be found here.
It starts on July 22nd and continues until early August. Many bishops and their spouses will be arriving earlier and be spending time in one or other of the dioceses. There may be an opportunity to meet and engage with the bishops while they are in the dioceses. These bishops are likely to be allies or at least open minded, those who are taking the GAFCON viewpoint will be staying away. The Big Hello is the programme to welcome visiting bishops – accessible here.
At the top of my wish list for Lambeth would be to repeal the 1998 resolution 1.10, but I think there is no chance of that happening. If they did that it would be a signal to GAFCON that a schism is inevitable. It should happen, but it won’t. Whatever happens, it will be a carefully stage-managed affair that will have a slick publicity and comms team giving spin to everything that happens. This is the point where actions will speak louder than words. We have heard all the empty promises and wishes, but it is time to accept our LGBTQ brothers and sisters in Christ as full and equal members of the worldwide church.
Let us see what 2020 brings, but change is coming, just how much and how fast.
LGBTQ Faith UK 