My initially involuntary involvement with the Church of England (I was ‘sent’ to kindergarten Sunday school at the age of four in 1949) was fortuitous. My personality found a safe home in the Christian culture of my local church. The church taught me, in a traditional Sunday School way, about God and Jesus through learning stories about Jesus from the Bible. The ethos of the church was High Church Parish Communion but failed to instil in me an allegiance to Anglo-Catholic ritual or teachings. It’s just what my church happened to be – processions, servers, incense, ritual – things that appealed ..read more

My text for today comes from the Guardian, Review magazine, book section, 29th June 2024, pp 52 and 53, the final paragraph: “If you keep describing people as ‘you’, you are distancing yourself. In other words, not getting too involved. [Anita Desai] wanted to get at the tenuousness of life, a deceptively modest ambition within which lies a much greater truth: that we are not as bound to our circumstances as we may like to believe. “Well, what does one have? Just a few threads to hold one. After that, memories. Which may or may not be quite true.” This is taken from an article by the journal ..read more

Slavery – a crime against humanity On 26 May 2024 the Observer published an article about the extent of the Church of England’s ties to slavery in the eighteenth century in the Codrington plantations, a sugar estate in Barbados where black and mixed-race African slaves were held captive in horrific conditions, branded with irons and traded. The United Society Partners in the Gospel had issued an apology last year recognising slavery in plantations from which it had benefitted financially as a crime against humanity. In a recent post Ian Paul, well-known member of General Synod, disagrees with ..read more

I was born in 1945. As I’ve recounted before, in 1957 aged eleven I was intuitively confident that I desired the company of other boys, knowing that the other boys in my class were being attracted to girls. I rejected what I understood to be the taboos of my family, my church, Christian teaching, Biblical authority and the authority of God that desire for someone of the same sex was abhorrent to God, sinful, an abomination. My arrogant independence of mind meant that in rejecting the teaching of all these authorities I was determining that the Church, the Bible and God were in the wrong when t ..read more

During Holy Week and over the Easter weekend I’ve been reading an old Pelican Book I picked up somewhere and half read a few years ago and dipped into again, more recently, returned to this Easter weekend, and still haven’t quite finished. The book is Freud and Christianity by R. S. Lee. First published in 1948, a Pelican edition was published in 1967. Roy Stuart Lee spent his boyhood years in the Australian bush. Having studied theology and received M.A., B.Litt. and D.Phil. degrees at Sydney and Oxford and been ordained, from 1938 he worked at St Martin-in-the-Fields. After the war he was fo ..read more

Nineteen sixties The mood, the environment, the culture of the Church of England in the decade from my teenage years (the nineteen sixties, by when I’d known I was gay for five years) to the nineteen nineties, was a good place in which to be gay. The whole of my being, my intuitive, experiential, feeling, creative, idealistic, introverted self, discovered that I was in a gay friendly environment despite that me also knowing that homosexuality was taboo and disapproved of by God. But I was arrogant enough to have decided that if this was really what God thought, then God was wrong and I was rig ..read more

At the Oscars Jonathan Glazer’s movie The Zone of Interest won the award for the best international film. It was inspired by the real life of Rudolf Hoss, commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The film follows his idyllic domestic life with his wife and children in a stately home and garden immediately adjacent to the camp. Describing the atmosphere he attempted to capture in the film, Glazer said: ”All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present – not to say, ‘Look what they did then’; rather, ‘Look what we do now’.” It’s not that Hoss and his family don’t know t ..read more

Two developments affecting the place of LGBTQIA+ people and our allies in the Church of England have occurred as a result of the General Synod meeting in February. One is the programme of Living in Love and Faith activities announced by the lead bishop, the Rt Revd Martyn Snow of Leicester. The other is the creation of Together for the Church of England: Campaigning for a Church of England for All. This is apparently an amalgamation of GSGSG (General Synod Gender and Sexuality Group) and MOSAIC. The GSGSG is to become Together On General Synod (TOGS). TOGS is to be a campaign rather than a mem ..read more

Eighteen people gathered at St Andrew’s Church, Short Street, Waterloo on Saturday 2nd March 2024 for ‘Life in all its Fullness’ an event organised by Changing Attitude England held. It was advertised as a “gathering for progressive, inclusive, catholic, evangelical, contemplative, holistic, hopeful, maybe-Christians seeking transformation and justice within God’s unconditional, infinite, intimate love.” Some people had come long distances – Southend (not so far), Poole, Bristol. In the days before the event seven people who had booked emailed to say they were unable to come after all. I said ..read more

Life in all its fulness St Andrews Church, London, SE1 8LJ Saturday 2nd March 2024 10.00 to 16.00 A gathering for progressive, inclusive, catholic, evangelical, contemplative, holistic, hopeful, maybe-Christians seeking transformation and justice within God’s unconditional, infinite, intimate love. It will be a mainly Christian gathering of mainly Anglican people from all walks of life. So far as is possible it will be a dogma- and discrimination- free zone exploring healthy living and spiritual life focused on love, goodness, wisdom, compassion, truth and justice Six of us will be resourcing ..read more