Back in September there was a furore about the refusal of the Bishop of Hereford, Richard Jackson, to give permission for the Rev Mpho Tutu van Furth, the daughter of late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, to officiate at the funeral in Shropshire of her godfather, Martin Kenyon, because of her being in a same-sex marriage.
In the aftermath of this furore the Labour MP Ben Bradshaw, a lay Anglican who is a member of Parliament's Ecclesiastical Committee, the committee that scrutinises legislation passed by the Church of England's General Synod to determine whether it should go to the King for royal assent, has declared that unless the Church of England ceases to discriminate against lesbian and gay people it will face questions in Parliament about why it does so.
According to a report in the Guardian on 4 October Mr Bradshaw said:
'I hope that we might see change ... If not, parliament might want to look at this. Patience is being worn very thin, and parliament is in a position to put pressure on the church. Without change, I think we might see growing calls for disestablishment ....
'The C of E is a fantastic resource in every part of the country. I think there's great value in the servant church that's there for everybody, on big state occasions and on countless smaller community occasions and events.
'But the contract with the nation has to be that it is there for everybody. It's increasingly obvious that the C of E is not there for lesbian and gay people. And not only that, but it is actively homophobic, cruel, hurtful and institutionally hostile.'
There can be no doubt that there will be many on the liberal side of the Church of England's debate about sexual ethics who will be replying 'amen' to what Bradshaw is saying here. However, I want to argue that what he is saying is misleading and that it is what he is asking for that would mean the Church of England breaking its contract with the English nation.
As with so many elements of the traditional constitutional arrangements in the United Kingdom, there is no written statement of the contract between the Church of England and the English nation. Nevertheless, the witness of history makes the nature of the contract clear.
Since the conversion of the Saxon kingdoms of what is now England during the course of the seventh century, it has been historically accepted that the role of the Church of England is to minister the saving work of Jesus Christ to the people of England through the preaching of the Word, the celebration of the sacraments, and the provision of pastoral care, in order that they may have the opportunity to repent, believe, and live a godly life in the power of the Holy Spirit, so that they may enjoy a right relationship with God in this world and spend a blessed eternity in God's presence in the world to come.
The role of the English monarchy (exercised today together with the British Parliament) is to give legal authority to the Church to carry out this role and to supervise the Church's activity to ensure that it is exercising this role properly (it is this supervisory role that is meant when the English monarch is described as the 'supreme governor' of the Church of England).
The question raised by Ben Bradshaw is whether the Church of England is performing its role in this arrangement properly in relation to 'lesbian and gay people' (which I take to mean women and men who are sexually attracted to members of their own sex). In my view the answer to this question is 'yes'.
Can lesbian and gay people attend Church of England services so that they can hear the Word preached? Yes.
Can lesbian and gay people be baptised and confirmed and receive Holy Communion? Yes.
Can lesbian and gay people receive pastoral care from the Church of England throughout the course of their lives and Christian funerals at the end of them? Yes.
Why then do Ben Bradshaw and others with similar views feel that the Church of England is not fulfilling its role properly?
For three reasons.
First, because it says to lesbian and gay people (as it says to everyone) that sexual intercourse should only take place within marriage.
Secondly, because it says to lesbian and gay people (as it says to everyone) that marriage has to be within the limits laid down by God (this means someone cannot marry if they are already married, they cannot marry a close relative, and they cannot marry someone of the same sex as themselves).
Thirdly, because it says to lesbian and gay people (as it says to everyone) that they can only be ordained if they are prepared to live according to the Church's teaching (including its teaching on sexual ethics and marriage).
These are the reasons why Bradshaw holds that the Church of England is 'actively homophobic, cruel, hurtful and institutionally hostile.' This accusation has resonance in our society because it is now increasingly held that everyone (lesbian and gay people included) should be able to engage in whatever form of sexual activity they find desirable without encountering moral disapproval for so doing, and should be able to marry the person (of whatever sex) they want to marry.
Not to allow people to freely enjoy the forms of sexual activity that they desire or marry who they want to marry is seen as 'cruel' because it stops people doing what will make them happy. The Church of England is seen as trying to stop lesbian and gay people enjoying the forms of sexual activity that they want and marrying who they want. Therefore, the Church of England is being cruel and hostile to lesbian and gay people.
However, this argument misunderstands what it means for an action to be cruel. To qualify as cruel, an action has not only to cause someone distress but to do so unnecessarily. For example, both athletic and military training may involve forms of physical and mental distress, but the distress involved does not mean that the training was cruel unless it can be shown that the distress was unnecessary. The proper question to ask is therefore whether the Church of England is being cruel by causing unnecessary distress to lesbian and gay people.
The answer to this question is 'no.' To understand why, it first needs to be noted that it is a central part of Christian teaching that all human beings have to say no to desires that are contrary to God's will for his human creatures. Thus, Christianity says to the person who desires their neighbour's property 'Thou shalt not steal', to the person who desires to slander or libel their neighbour 'Thou shalt not bear false witness,' and to the person who desires to sleep with their neighbour's wife or husband 'Thou shalt not commit adultery.' What the Church says to lesbian and gay people about their sexual desires and desire for marriage is therefore part of what it says to everyone, which is that to be rightly related to God in this world, and happy with him forever in the world to come, you have to say 'no' to some of the things you desire to do, even if you really want to do them.
At this point it might be asked, is the Church right to say that lesbian and gay people need to refrain from sex outside marriage and only marry those of the opposite sex? The answer is that the Church is right to do so because both the witness of nature in terms of human biology, and the witness of Scripture, tell us that God created human beings to have sexual intercourse with the opposite sex, and because the biblical account of the origins of marriage in Genesis 2:18-25 (reiterated by Jesus in Matthew 19:3-12 and Mark 10:2-12) likewise tells us that God created marriage to be a relationship between two people of the opposite sex.
God created human beings to live sexually in a certain way and the Church has no authority to say otherwise, any more than it has the authority to say that it is right to steal, bear false witness, or commit adultery.
What Ben Bradshaw and others really want the Church to do is to break its side of the unwritten contract between the Church of England and the English nation by ceasing to preach the truth about how God has created his human creatures to live in favour of what some, although by no means all, lesbian and gay people want to hear. The Church cannot rightly do this and neither Bradshaw nor Parliament as a whole should seek to force it to do so.
Martin Davie is a lay Anglican theologian and Associate Tutor in Doctrine at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.
