Beatitudes, not platitudes

That the Orlando shooting was horrific is an understatement, and over the past week there have been outpourings of anger and hurt that I can’t begin to properly enunciate. To be clear, this was an attack on LGBT* people, because they were LGBT*. And that is a very scary development for so many of my friends who are LGBT* - and indeed, the more I think about it, for me. With this appalling crime comes a threat and a promise in a simple message – we are not welcome. We are not to be accepted by society, and it’s completely OK to hate us. Hate what we do, hate what we ‘do to society’, hate everything about us.

And the terrifying thought is that actually, this isn’t a one-off feeling – this is how people feel about us, day in day out. Most of them don’t carry guns (or rather, most don’t use them on us) – but most of them mean it, and most of them, tacitly or openly, support measures to suppress and oppress us, and in some cases, have us imprisoned or executed. Support for execution is no different to picking up a gun and shooting us.

Across the world LGBT* people have felt solidarity with those massacred in Orlando, because it could have been us – and as far as the killer was concerned, it should have been. As far as those who agree that we’re not worth anything – it should have been. We, LGBT* people, and those who support us, stand in solidarity. But one thing has begun to gnaw at me, and I just feel the need to put it in writing. One group that doesn’t have the right to stand in solidarity with us has found the need to make its voice heard – and that’s the church. And quite honestly, the church as an institution doesn’t have the moral integrity to stand anywhere near us.

I was quite shocked by how angry the way my church, the Anglican Church, has responded to this has made me. And I thought it might be worth unpicking.

To put my cards on the table – I’m a paid up, bog standard Christian. I believe in everything in the creeds and take part fully in the sacramental life of the Church of England. I am also gay, and am in a committed relationship. And for some people in the Anglican Communion, those things don’t mix. Don’t mix so much, in fact, that they call for the execution of people like me. So much that they are absolutely convinced I’m going to Hell because my capacity for love is the same, but different, to theirs. So much so that they preach bile and hatred towards us; so much so that they often end up hating themselves.

Yet, in the name of ‘unity’, we stand with such churches within the Anglican Communion. We put unity with those who hate us above effective mission and ministry to those who are already on the margins of society. We tacitly endorse hatred on a weekly basis. We go as close as we can to excommunication of a so-called liberal church, ECUSA, who dared to promote active and listening ministry to people who were different. Yet we are quite happy to remain in absolute full communion with churches who have not only themselves broken unity (ACNA and GAFCON), but whose members want people like me dead. How have we got here?

When I first read the Archbishops of Canterbury and York’s statement on the murders, I found myself feeling silently grateful – they had recognized LGBT* people. What planet are we on? Gay Christians are expected to feel grateful that the church recognizes that LGBT* people exist? And indeed, grateful that they condemn acts of violence towards LGBT* people?

Yet where are the condemnations of violence from the very churches that pushed out ECUSA and preach hate towards us? No mention of homophobia – not even from the English Archbishops. The Anglican Church does not have the right to pronounce on these things if they are complicit in the cycle of violence that leads to LGBT* people still feeling out of place, and indeed sees LGBT* teenagers kill themselves on a daily basis, driven on by the persecution of their churches. And Christians claim they are persecuted because civil gay marriage was brought in? What world are we living in?

And if I feel this way, then what on earth must those pale reflections of pity from the church feel like to people who have turned their back on an institution that they feel hates them? It is downright offensive. If the church really cared about reaching out to this marginalized community, they wouldn’t need a massacre to do so. They should learn wisdom and keep their empty words to themselves.

This is the same church where I feel uncomfortable mentioning that I am partnered, in case I get the usual knowing looks and pained expressions. The church that preaches the God who comes to give “life in all its fullness” (John 10:10), yet in reality attempts to stunt the growth that LGBT* people yearn for. A church that couldn’t bear to see LGBT* people granted the same rights under the civil law as straight people. A church that preaches that we must “love our enemies” (Matthew 5:44) yet itself seems to hate its friends.

Sanctimonious nonsense about “love” and “forgiveness” has been posted by Christians all over Facebook over the past few days – but how about listening to those LGBT* people who you claim to love, and see how that love feels to them? The church comes to understand better the mind of God by learning from one another and communing. Yet in the recent Facilitated Conversations, we were expected to lay ourselves bare in all the gory details of rejection, hurt, frailty and loss, and then be lectured on how we were tearing the church apart and sowing discord by people who preach against us, tell us tot repress God’s goodness within us and who call us disordered. The only thing being torn apart is the heart of Jesus Christ in anguish at the pain of LGBT* people, and the church should be the people coming to us, its members and those it has thrown into the gutter, for forgiveness.

It was very telling to watch the public response to the murders. The church, with its high theology of priesthood, should be ashamed. Where were the priests of God, saying the things the community of the world needed said? Nowhere. Even where they did come out with some words of supposed comfort, who would believe them or listen to them?

Instead, the modern secular priests are the likes of Lady Gaga, standing weeping before a crowd and speaking with integrity. Church leaders don’t seem to understand that the way they shun LGBT* people is killing their mission. We spend hours and hours talking about new ways to get young people into church. Well here’s a suggestion – stop participating in the cycle of violence towards LGBT* people. Start listening to the young people, who understand far more than so many so-called experts about what being LGBT* is like. Start listening to those who won’t enter through a church door because they can’t reconcile that with love for their LGBT* friends. These people are real, and these people are good people. And the church is slamming a door in their face.

At the Facilitated Conversations (and I’m sure elsewhere), we had people who didn’t understand basic biology of human sex and gender – that you could be XX but male, or the other plethora of unusual but lived experiences that biology pours out onto humanity. How can anyone possibly have a concrete theological view on sexuality and gender without understanding the basic tenets that they are describing? The Anglican Church is supposed to be founded on ‘scripture, tradition and reason’? When will the latter have its day in the sun?

Even more astounding are the parishes who bury their heads in the sand and pretend they don’t have any LGBT* members. Really? Who are you kidding? Might it not be that you make people feel they can’t tell you precisely because you have that attitude? Might it be that LGBT* people have run away from your parishes because they aren’t made to feel even basic welcome, let alone understanding? How can supposedly intelligent people allow this situation to continue? And where is the leadership the Church of England so desperately needs and yet so glaringly lacks?

My parish is a beacon, with several others in Cambridge, of not just “hate the sin, love the sinner”, but genuine engagement with, welcome for, belief in, trust in, love for, acceptance of LGBT* people. When the disgraceful meeting of Primates threw ECUSA out for witnessing to the love of Christ, our vicar declared publically “all are welcome here” and by goodness did she mean it – as did the congregation, who applauded loud and clear. But in the parishes outside of privileged cities, is this the case? For the children growing up LGBT*, what is the church doing? Are they at best invisible, or at worst despised? And will they be in the pews in twenty years – I sure think not.

The church is supposed to preach the beautitudes, not the platitudes. Yet to meet the fear and trembling that we LGBT* people feel after this Orlando shooting that is all they have offered. Blessed are they who mourn; blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake; blessed are they, when men hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil. That sounds rather apt.

If the church really cared about us, they wouldn’t have waited for fifty of us to get slaughtered in a place we are supposed to feel safe – indeed, a safe space that the church will not give us. They would have listened to us, instead of publishing insulting booklets informing priests how to “deal with” people with same sex attraction. And they would declare a period of mourning where they truly took to heart some of the things LGBT* people have said over the years, and where they really tried to understand how to be pastoral to us.

But they won’t.

Instead, we will have to wait another X number of years whilst they sort themselves out, and when they eventually accept us and come begging for the mercy they’ve denied us for centuries, it’ll be too late. There won’t be many of us left who are willing to undergo this constant self-flagellation. The violence has got to stop, or we have to get out of the situation where it’s inflicted on us. The church needs to think very deeply about that.

And in the meantime, those of us crazy enough to try to change things and to pray with and in the church will continue to hurt. We will continue to be blessed by the ministries of decent, loving, caring priests – like those we find as the norm in Cambridge – but we will hurt. And for that, the church should be ashamed.

“Forgive them, Father, for they do not know what they are doing”. God give us the grace to help us forgive and help them realize just what they are doing; and to bind ourselves to the God who hears “the cry of the afflicted, and listens to their cry.”