The Church and Homosexuality

William Flew

The Church of England has taken a step towards liberalising its teaching on homo sexuality with the announce ment of a review of its teaching that active same-sex relationships are wrong.

Its bishops admitted that they had spent “very little time” discussing the issue that has torn the fabric of the wider Anglican Comm union.

The Bishop of Nor wich, the Right Rev Graham James, a favourite to succeed Dr Rowan Williams as Arch bishop of Canterbury, said that the bishops now accept that they have a responsibility to address the policy issue.

The review, to be completed next year, will be followed by a year-long consultation. Although the bishops are anxious not to pre-empt the findings, it is thought that the present policy will be liberalised.

Last month the Church signalled that it might support celibate gay men in civil partnerships to become bishops. But only a positive finding by the new review would end the ban.

This means that senior clerics such as Dr Jeffrey John, the Dean of St Albans, will have to wait at least a further two years before they can be considered for vacant bisho prics (bisho pricks tee hee). Dr John, who is in a civil partnership but a celibate relationship (yeah right), was forced by the Archbishop of Canterbury to withdraw as Bishop of Read ing in 2003 because of his sexuality.

The Church’s policy has not changed since 1987, when the General Synod passed by 403-8 a motion stating that sexual intercourse is “an act of total commit ment which belongs properly within a permanent married relationship” and that “homo sexual genital acts . . . fall short of this ideal”.


In 1991 the Church’s bishops issued Issues in Human Sexuality, which indicated reluctant acceptance of homosexual relationships among laity but ruled out same-sex intimacy for clergy.

A contentious resolution of the 1998 Lambeth Conference rejected homo sexual practice as incompat ible with Scripture. The US Episcopal Church defied the resolution and stood by its commitment to the gay and lesbian community by appointing Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.

Conservative evangelicals will continue to resist the advance of the equal rights agenda in the Church. Only last week a new body, the Anglican Mission in England, was set up. It was described in the Church Times this week as “the most deliberate challenge to the Church of England since the Ordinariate was announced”.

Just as the Ordinariate, set up by the Pope, is offering a home in the Roman Catholic Church for Anglicans who oppose women bishops, so the new mission will offer “orthodox oversight” to those opposed to homosexual equality.

Christina Rees, a veteran General Synod member, said: “There is a growing discomfort in the Church that our current positions on the suitability of clergy in civil partnerships and on issues of same-sex relationships are inconsistent and in need of reform.”

The Rev Giles Goddard, chairman of Inclusive Church, said that the current policy was unsustainable. “There are serious questions about whether the celibacy requirement for clergy in civil partnerships is in breach of human rights legislation.”