Up to this point, I confess to being surprised that there are no ‘positive’ arguments from the Bishops for their position. They don’t cite a single passage from Scripture, or example from the history of the Church, they don’t lay out a constructive vision for same-sex relationships, nor their envisaged place in the life of the Church. Throughout the majority of their videos they adopt a ‘negative’ posture, seeking (I think unsuccessfully) to remove the obstacles they rightly perceive the teaching of the Bible and the Church present. The strategy seems to be thus to undermine the foundation of the Church’s historic position, knowing that once the foundation is sufficiently undermined in people’s thinking, the edifice will fall, and the position of the Church will change. And that is the now publicly stated ambition of both Bishops.
There is however one argument they deploy that seeks to establish a positive mandate for the change they wish to see, and it is the argument about human flourishing. We need to recognise first that neither Bishop tells us what human flourishing actually is. This seems a strange omission from the dialogue, but perhaps it is due to the unrehearsed nature of the conversation. The idea seems to embrace a plethora of related aspirations, including wellbeing, happiness, and life satisfaction. It is associated with success and healthy personal development. More technically, The Human Flourishing Programme at Harvard University has developed a matrix for measuring such ‘flourishing’, rooted in five key ideas: happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and close social relationships.
It is a strange thing to hear Bishops of the Church espousing such a secularised vision for life. A more authentically Christian vision for humanity might define human flourishing in relationship to Christ. Mind you, once we put the concept of ‘human flourishing’ next to Scripture we find it an uncomfortable fit. If the concept can be inferred from the pages of the Bible at all, it is markedly different from the ideal finding common currency in our culturally angst-ridden debates.
The Bible is much more concerned about our being transformed into the image of Christ. ‘Faithfulness’ is a word that captures the dynamics of discipleship far more than ‘flourishing’, at least in any contemporary usage. By God’s grace there are times when faithfulness allows for ‘flourishing’, but where such a culturally conditioned idea of ‘flourishing’ and a Christian call to ‘faithfulness’ conflict, as they must surely do, it is the desire for faithfulness that captures our heart. For many Christians in the world today the idea of ’human flourishing’ is laughable. To be baptised in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is to take up the cross, to follow a crucified Saviour. It is to embark on a journey of marginalisation, rejection, persecution and suffering. It is precisely to lose many of the trappings that our indulgent, self-serving culture now assumes as inalienable rights! We saw in Synod a contemptuous disregard for the Church elsewhere in the world. But it remains a simple statement of fact that their vision of discipleship is far more profoundly Biblical than the pursuit of ‘human flourishing’ by those Church leaders who are already amongst the most culturally privileged in the world. It is bizarre to find this parody of life being peddled by Christian pastors.
But back to the videos put out by the Bishops! By-passing any reflection on the nature of Christian discipleship, we are instead left with the grandiose vision of ‘human flourishing’. Given the lack of detail about what this entails, it is perhaps a little surprising that the Bishops are quite so adamant that the best environment for such flourishing is marriage. Their basis for saying as much is entirely subjective and anecdotal. There is no evidence or research offered for such a claim, nor is there any engagement with Scripture, or Christian teaching or tradition. It all feels incredibly arbitrary. We are told that we know more about sexual orientation than we did two thousand years ago… maybe, but does God?
And as another Bishop recently wrote: ‘The Church cannot hold a public service for a couple simply on the basis that it discerns virtues and good qualities in their relationship. It must also be confident that the pattern of relationship it is affirming is in accordance with God’s will. It expresses that confidence liturgically by proclaiming a form of life which is in accordance with God’s will and asking the couple to affirm publicly that they seek to live faithfully within this way of life (para 476, Bishop Keith Sinclair’s Dissenting Statement). Indeed.
Of course, once we do ask what the Bible teaches about what is in accordance with God’s will, it becomes painfully clear that there is some measure of dissonance. Given the divergent destiny in view, it is hardly surprising that there is such discord between the Bishops and Scripture on the place of marriage in the pursuit of that destiny. To say that marriage is the ‘best environment’ for human flourishing is to misunderstand not just the Bible’s vision for human life, but is also to distort the Bible’s vision for marriage. It is also pastorally catastrophic. Bad theology hurts people. And the Bishops’ comments on this matter have been hugely damaging to many in our own Church and in many others, who feel ‘betrayed’ and deeply undermined in the (often sacrificial) decisions they have made about how to live in a way that resonates with the discipline of the Church.
To say that marriage is the best environment for human flourishing is - at best - hopelessly inadequate, and more likely simply plain wrong. The BCP does indeed celebrate marriage as being ‘ordained for the mutual society, help and comfort’ of a husband and wife, ‘both in prosperity and adversity’. It is a way of life ordained by God and made holy… but only one way. There are other ways, equally valid and at least equally providing a context in which we can pursue faithfulness to the Christian vision for Christ-likeness. But the Bishops’ claim goes way beyond such a humble and Biblical idea.
To set marriage up as the best environment for human flourishing is a politically cynical sleight of hand, preparing the ground for the follow on question as to why it should be withheld from same sex couples, especially those in ‘permanent, faithful, stable relationships’. The Bishops’ pay tribute to those who have opened their eyes, we are told, to ‘gay partnerships that have provided a context of flourishing’. As we have seen, that may be irrelevant to the question of Christian discipleship, but more importantly, the Bishops’ have raised huge questions about the experience of those in our congregations who have never married, or who are divorced, widowed, or separated. Those who for range of circumstances, often beyond their control, will not marry, or who are no longer involved in a marriage, are seemingly denied the ‘best environment’ for their flourishing.
Again, quite apart from whether ‘flourishing’ is a worthy, or even appropriate, goal for Christians, this is in flat contradiction to the teaching of Scripture. St. Paul spends some considerable time on precisely this question (See I Cor.7, and the sermons preached on this passage which can be found elsewhere on this website). Although if we accept the Bishops’ approach to Scripture (see a previous post in this series) we may have to disregard Paul’s teaching here as hopelessly blinkered by his own personal issues and his first-century prejudice. But I, for one, am unwilling to lose his brilliant, Spirit-inspired and pastorally sensitive insights on the grounds of such flimsy conjecture. Paul’s vision for Church life, celebrating as he does the range of human experience as so many God-ordained contexts for discipleship, seems far more spiritually enriching, healthy and appropriate than the skewed, narrow, and excluding parameters being laid out by those advocating a change in the historic discipline, teaching and Canons of the Church.
And on this basis we must demur from the Bishops’ vision for love. Again and again it is claimed that such change would be ‘loving’. Love determines how we interpret Scripture; love is not about self-indulgence, but seeks the flourishing, the good of the other; love is the basis of our unity (presumably in the face of the disunity the Bishops’ Proposals have engendered...). Again and again the Bishops posit ‘love’ as the foundation for their thinking and their ambition in this regard. It is a claim for the moral high ground. But it is misplaced nonetheless. And it unravels at preceisley the same point. Christians seek faithfulness above flourishing. Of course properly understood, faithfulness to Christ is the ultimate in human flourishing, but as we have seen, that isn’t what the phrase is being used to mean. Which is the problem. Love is about redemption and discipleship. It seeks the sanctification of the other. That is ‘the good of the other’, but it doesn’t necessarily equate to ‘flourishing’. The conflating of those two ideas is as unfortunate as it is misleading. Our love for each other is structured in the context of our love for God. And love for God, throughout Scripture is inexorably linked to the question of faithfulness, to walking in the way of His commands and statutes. It is never loving to uncouple a human life from God’s vision for that life.
