A Martian reading the secular media would deduce certain factoids about the Church.
One, Christianity is all about sex. Two, Christians passionately disagree about sex. Three, Christians consider sex crucially important... far more so than whether God exists. Et cet.
And yet if I were a betting man, I'd be prepared to lay short odds on my being in agreement with the vast majority of Christendom regarding sex. Viz: it's a lot more fun to practise than talk about; talking about it was never much cop and has now become very boring indeed; an awful lot of other things matter a lot more – including world poverty, the doctrine of the Trinity and whether or not the congregation really didn't know the tune of the opening hymn last Sunday or was just half asleep.
Thus, when asked if I'd like to comment on the spat in Synod last week I had to confess that I hadn't read the Bishops' Statement; I hadn't read the Archbishops' Radical Inclusion letter; I hadn't even read the Episcopal-Hasbeens' Letter, though for some reason now long forgotten, I'd examined a line-up of mug-shots of the Hasbeens involved.
So it with the effort of heaving myself out of my apathy that I address the subject now – with apologies to the minority for whom the subject is obviously of very great personal importance indeed.
Let's start by establishing what most of us can surely agree on:
First, human sexuality is not the most vital issue facing the human race. Whether I am waved through on Judgement Day is really not going to hang on my beliefs about homosexuality. Which is just as well because I'm not at all sure what my beliefs about homosexuality are. Nor have I ever been. (Though I was put in a box on the subject about twenty years ago, when a new contributor to Thought for the Day and naively assuming the aspiration was to stimulate thought, preferably for about a day. Most contributions at the time being thoughts for about three and a half seconds, I over-compensated.) So far in my life – as I said on Radio 4's Moral Maze recently – I've changed my mind by a hundred and eighty degrees at least four times.
Why the uncertainty?
Because, secondly, scripture doesn't say a great deal about same-sex attraction or what to do about it. Last time I counted, there were half a dozen references in the whole of Holy Writ. Compare that to references to social injustice, for instance...
Admittedly, thirdly, all of those references are negative. Which makes for uncomfortable reading when considering gay people, their loving relationships and what we should do about those who seek to make faithful lifelong commitments.
Fourthly however, from memory most references to divorce in Scripture are pretty negative too. So why is same-sex love the random Rubicon? There seems to be a grossly hypocritical double standard here – tolerated by many of us who would claim to draw a holy line in the sand and lay down our lives for biblical truths.
It is also a (more intuitive) biblical truth that God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16). And that the marriage template at the beginning of Genesis involves one man and one woman, exclusively, for life. Which means that ever since Synod rescinded the ban on those already married being married twice, there has been a contradiction when it comes to same-sex marriage. I can't for the life of me see how we can logically allow one unbiblical form of church wedding and not another. (Though I can easily see why. Pure homo-sexism: there being more divorcés among us than gays; and most of us more easily imagining divorce happening to us.)
The Church was pastorally and theologically sound when she refused services of remarriage but welcomed the blessing of remarriages that had already happened. (Take the heat out of the issue by envisaging the Church in a polygamous society: obviously we wouldn't perform second or third marriages; but would sensibly support those already in place.) If we had stuck to our pragmatic guns, it would have been reasonable to have followed the same procedure for same-sex marriages.
But we didn't, so we're now in a right old pickle of – mostly heterosexual – hypocrisy and self-righteousness.
Which (fifthly, I believe?) was the sin Jesus seemed to condemn most vehemently. It's hard to see how any Christian could object to Radical Inclusion – yes, even of the unwashed and homeless, who backwash into the Communion chalice – given that we've been included ourselves. Judging by Our Lord's attitude, a smidgeon of theological fudging and forgiveness seems rather more Christian than aggressive self-certainty... On either side.
So I'm mostly praying for a little more space and leeway, from everyone.
Something which has puzzled me for most of my adult life is the almost ubiquitous requirement for others to agree with us. I was, I now realise, unusually fortunate in being brought up in a large and vocal family, in the centre of a University city. Disagreement was frequent, vociferous and almost entirely amicable. We continued the tradition and no family meal reaches its conclusion without half a dozen passionate disagreements over our kitchen table. My idea of Heaven is of arriving to find that I have been wrong on most things I have ever expressed an opinion on... along with most of my brothers and sisters who have disagreed with me.
A young disciple asked his rabbi for the Jewish tradition on a dilemma. Well, his teacher replied, this school maintains this; and that, that; then there's the other which holds the other.
'Faced with such disagreement,' asked the confused pupil, 'how can we discern the tradition?'
'The disagreement,' said the rabbi, 'is the tradition.'
Anne Atkins is the author of three novels and has contributed to most of the UK's national newspapers. She is on Twitter @anne_atkins.
