The Church and the Supreme Court

[MissScarletInTheBallroom]

@PriOn1 @DuesToTheDirt

I noticed your comments on the Supreme Court thread that has now filled up regarding the reactions of your respective church ministers in relation to yesterday's judgment.

I'm not a regular churchgoer but consider myself CofE and had my children baptised last year. I am genuinely fascinated by the way the gender debate seems to be playing out in the Church.

My friend who posted on Facebook yesterday expressing shock and disappointment about the judgment is a vicar. My friend's spouse, who is trans, is also a vicar. They live and work in a town which is famous for being very LGBTQ friendly and they are so overtly political and partisan about trans issues that I imagine their church to be completely unwelcoming of anyone who doesn't share their political beliefs about trans people. I find it very odd that they are clearly more accepting of people who don't believe in God than they are of people who don't believe TWAW.

My friend and I also have a mutual friend who is very senior in the Church of England. This person is connected to both of us on Facebook. Whilst this person is fairly discreet, they are also very politically engaged and will generally not shy away from making their opinions known, albeit in a very measured and diplomatic way.

This person will no doubt be well aware of the judgment and will also have seen my friend's response to it. However, they have made absolutely no comment about it whatsoever. Crickets. They have not made any posts of their own or liked or otherwise reacted to any of our friend's posts. Once upon a time I would have expected them to react in some small way to such posts if they agreed with them, but it is possible that now they feel they occupy too senior a position to show bias on such a contentious matter and will not publicly react to such things whether they agree with them or not.

This person is hugely influential in the Church of England. I would absolutely love to know what they think, but feel it would be inappropriate to ask. (Even though we are on "discussing political views" terms.)

If I had to hazard a guess I would say that they agree with the judgment and understand that the sometimes conflicting needs of different groups need to be fairly balanced.

Anyway, this is a bit niche but I wanted to respond to both your points and would be interested in an ongoing discussion about the role of the Church in all this.

I'm CofE, and I'm afraid I believe the Anglican church is a lost cause on this issue.
What carries me through, is that they might change the window dressing, but they can't change the spiritual bones. This will all blow over, along with other idiocies.

They seem to have thought that this was a new way to communicate with people, without taking heed of the people they were ostracising in the process.

There was a report out recently that seemed to show people were turning to more traditional religion. Time will tell.

I can't help wondering how your friend and spouse would fare if they were moved from their trans-friendly city to one that's a bit more, ooh - urban & gritty? Realistic, perhaps?

I totally agree that the Anglican Church, in England at least, has lost its way and also members. Welby was a huge problem but I don't see any promising candidates for AoC on the horizon. Meanwhile, many are converting to Catholicism, or so I've read.

The CofE needs to get its act together on not allowing sexual abuse of girls, boys and vulnerable adults, before it starts to worry about sensitivity around gender identity.

The Anglican Church are determined to destroy themselves. Christian belief has long been optional within the church hierarchy. Even Chaucer wrote about corruption within the church 650 years ago:

if gold rust, what then will iron do?
For if a priest be foul in whom we trust
No wonder that a common man should rust

Mind you, the Church of Scotland gives the Anglican Church a run for its money.

The person I am talking about could conceivably be on the shortlist to succeed JW but is not currently considered to be a front runner.

I think my friend and their spouse will most likely stay where they are, in their safe little bubble.

If the last wave of "conversion to Catholicism" is anything to go by, byeeee... The Catholic church is certainly "on message" about trans issues. What a shame it is still widely off message about women per se.

The Church of England and the Anglican communion are a broad church representing many differing and often divergent views. Just like feminism, in fact - oddly there isn't an accepted creed for feminism either. Much of the stuff I read on these boards (and seldom comment on) is narrowly focussed and intolerant of divergent views (which is why I seldom comment - the threads are often some of the nastiest and certainly rival AIBU in that sphere). It has done, and continues to do, some things badly. Like any institution, it is imperfect, and I would hope that it seeks to improve. Sometimes it does not do that well enough or quickly enough.

I can't help wondering how your friend and spouse would fare if they were moved from their trans-friendly city to one that's a bit more, ooh - urban & gritty? Realistic, perhaps?

I would hope that whatever one's personal opinions, the Christian message would override those. These are people, and unless and until they prove themselves to be un-Christian in their dealings (the OP said that she imagined what their church was like, so clearly does not know and is making judgement based on no evidence) with others I would hope that Christians would be equally welcoming of them as individuals. Where I live is "gritty" if not really urban (former mining community) and the Church welcomes the two trans people who attend - we treat them as people, not objects.

You're right that I have not actually been to their church. However, both their public statements make it clear that they do not tolerate alternative views, and I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable attending their church.

I have previously attended other churches with my friend, who also led the bidding prayers at my own wedding. But this feels like a barrier between us which cannot be overcome, because I believe that if I ever made my views known to my friend, it would be the end of our friendship.

Sorry, I am not quite following. My understanding is that the CofE does not currently offer or bless gay marriage (a stance that I do not support).

Is it the case that the church is accepting of a male clergyman being married to a female-born transman, because their female biology makes them an acceptable spouse? Or is it that female clergy (good luck to them in general!) can marry male born transwomen and again the biology makes it ok? Or is the church happy for a clergyman or clergywoman to marry a same sex partner who has transitioned because their transition ‘makes’ them the opposite sex? How does this all fit in with the CofE stance on gay marriage?

To clarify, when I say I wouldn't feel comfortable attending their church, it's not because I disapprove of how they choose to live their lives.

What makes me feel uncomfortable is knowing that they believe that anyone who shares my view that women's rights are as important as trans rights is a raging bigot.

This is an excellent question and I'm hoping some of the people on this thread who know more about this than I do will be able to shed some light on it.

For clarity (and in the hope that nobody who knows this couple IRL is reading this thread), they are a heterosexual couple, married in the CofE as a man and a woman, both ordained, and one of them has since transitioned so they are now identifying as a same sex couple.

A while (few years?) ago the CofE set up a committee to decide what a woman is. Strangely they didn’t need to decide what a man is as far as I recall. They came in for a good deal of ridicule. Eve and the Virgin Mary featured.

I haven’t heard anything about it since but at least they now have an answer. How relieved they must be.

Anyone know what happened to that committee?

Oh jeepers…

’And after the coffee break - thank you, Mary - we will prayerfully determine how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.’

Yeah. I would genuinely love to know how my friend privately feels about it.

Friend has always been progressive/kind/inclusive/LGBT friendly, so being supportive of trans rights doesn't come as a surprise to me. But friend is also, at the end of the day, someone from a very mainstream religious background (father is also a vicar), who went to university, got ordained, married someone of the opposite sex and had a child, all before the age of 30. So far, so conventional. Only then did friend's spouse declare that they identify as a member of the opposite sex.

I genuinely cannot tell whether my friend is really as OK with it all privately as their public statements would suggest, or feels backed into a corner.

My guess would be that my friend has privately found it all very challenging, but loves their spouse very deeply, and - possibly - considers that this is a challenge given to them by God to test the strength of their love.

The problem, in my view, is that my friend is a vicar and so has an obligation to be inclusive and compassionate towards everyone, particularly their congregation, and not just supportive of their spouse.

I think perhaps my previous post is straying off the topic, which wasn't intended to be a discussion of my friend's marriage, but the role of the Church in this debate.

I do think my friend's obviously partisan posting is inappropriate given their role in the community, but my friend is very junior in the Church, and this is a problem that goes right up to the top. Perhaps it is unfair to criticise a small fish like my friend when the big fish like Justin Welby are up to their necks in it. It's not just that my friend has gone off piste to support their spouse; this appears to be the official party line as well.

But it does rather sicken me that an institution which knows perfectly well what biological sex people are when debating whether or not they should be allowed to become a bishop, or whether or not to bless their marriage, can decide that sex is entirely metaphysical when it comes to men wanting to become women.

And as a PP pointed out, given the Church's poor track record when it comes to safeguarding, dismissing women's concerns about safeguarding when it comes to gender politics seems extremely unwise.

There are now blessings for same sex marriages, but not marriages per se. The church continues to hold the view that marriage is between a man and a woman, but the Church cannot deny a gay marriage exists if it is carried out in a recognised form outside the Church - if that makes sense. So without getting into the mechanics of specific circumstances of a couple, a marriage recognised in law is recognised as a marriage by the church, they could bless that marriage, but they cannot perform that marriage. Things have moved on significantly since the days (the 1990's) when my gay vicar friend was allowed to hold a parish and also to have his partner live in the vicarage provided (and this was the rule) gay priests did not consummate the relationship.... (yeah, right, we all believed that). You could be gay provided you were also celibate.

Perhaps the poster above is thinking of the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) initiative. Yet another cofe initiative that appear briefly in the firmament, absorb a lot of work, then fizzle away to nothing.
It had a lot about homosexuality in the church (no problem with that) then one segment tacked onto the end about trans.
Which we were not allowed to discuss.

Bingo says it will all be just fine

The problem, in my view, is that my friend is a vicar and so has an obligation to be inclusive and compassionate towards everyone, particularly their congregation, and not just supportive of their spouse.

I agree. But equally you do not know that they do anything otherwise. You are judging your friend (?) from a distance and without any awareness of the facts. The basic position is that all priests have views and they are as entitled to express them as anyone else is. That inevitably means that some people may make choices about attending the church. It does not mean they won't be welcome if they did, or treated poorly, or anything else - it is their choice. There are some churchesd I won't set foot in, and that is because I fundamentally do not agree with the practices or views of the priest in charge. On a 121 basis, or within the church itself, we may get on extremely well - it doesn't mean that our disagreements are put aside or irrelevant.

This is all fine. Our founder was kind of known for His disagreements with some of the leaders of His "Church". We are not called to be doormats, to be clones, or to blindly accept that what has been will always be. “Do you think I have come to bring peace on the earth? No, I tell you, not peace, but division..." (Luke 12:51). The "divisions" are not as simple as believe or don't believe. They are also about the choices we make in interpreting the gospel and the actions we take arising from those choices.

Bingo!

Given the C of E's appalling record of abuse of children and vulnerable adults with the Archbishop having to stand down because of his massive safeguarding responsibility fails, it defies belief that they so readily joined in with the "born in the wrong body" & "men are women when they say they are" nonsense. Especially relentlessly pushing it at children in C of E schools.

It does depressingly suggest that they have yet again failed to remove some dodgy adults from power in the C of E who've been allowed to run amok with this ideology as well.

None of it makes the C of E appear to be the safe place for the young and vulnerable that it should be.

We are all sinners but the idea is we all repent and try to turn away from sin. A male vicar standing at the front of church and claiming to be a woman is both lying and coveting womanhood, breaking two of the Ten Commandments and doing so without any remorse.

ViolasandViolets

This is very much how I feel too. I don't know what I would do if Minister in my Church tried to come out as the opposite sex. If he wanted to dress in female clothes that would be one thing, which I would feel a bit irritated about, but it's trying to say that they are women that I object to.

Sorry @MissScarletInTheBallroom , you tagged me but my post that prompted that tagging was inaccurate as I had misunderstood PriOn1's post that I was replying to - I was skim reading in all the excitement last night! I'm not actually a member of any church.