Pilling - Initial Reactions

My first reaction to seeing the Pilling Report was disbelief that in the twenty first century any church could put out a report on human sexuality written by a group that appears to have consisted of 8 men and 2 women and expect it to be taken as a serious contribution to the subject. In the introduction, Sir Joseph Pilling, the chair of the working party states that one of the women, Revd Dr Jessica Martin, appointed as a consultant, 'challenged the group to think about sexuality more widely than most of our experience was leading us to do.' Well, no surprise there! That's what women do to men, they challenge them to understand sexuality from a different perspective (as, of course, men do to women and people of different orientations do to one another.) How any sane community of faith can contemplate commissioning a group to sit down and try to understand the complex nature of sexuality or the theology written about it when that group consists largely of one gender is beyond my comprehension and probably the comprehension of most of the people outside the church who may read the report. Most of the men I know who've read a book like Jo Ind's insightful text on female sexuality, Memories of Bliss; God, Sex and Us here find parts of it quite difficult to take, never mind empathise with. Most of the women I know have similar trouble with books like Anthony Swofford's Jarhead here which is a reflection on intense male bonding and sexuality by a Vietnam veteran. To explore the wonderful phenomenon of sexuality in anything more than a superficial way, we need to be in the same room talking and listening to people of both sexes and both orientations. 

SCM Press 2003

So the report is a bit more superficial than anything I was hoping for. The group have done their best but actually have not got to grips with the range of understandings of sexuality present in research, literature and society today. What they have done is to compile a report that examines a select spectrum of the church's handling of matters to do with social, liturgical and pastoral structures for marking out the territory around gender difference and the relationships that people form. The document is less about human sexuality and more about what kinds of attitudes and behaviours the Anglican church has taken and could adopt in the near future (without being too radical) in relation to matters to do with sexuality and especially some aspects of gender orientation. There is a long section on the effect of all this on the Anglican Communion.

In particular, on the social sciences front, I was really disappointed that the report does not show much evidence of considering the wide spectrum of research available on the nature and incidence of homosexuality - it refers to a very limited range of studies which all seem selected, in advance, to make a particular point. I was also disappointed that, on the theological front, it does nothing very much to help us look behind, around and beyond the contribution of St. Augustine of Hippo and the Introduction to the BCP Marriage Service for the many sources embedded in the Christian tradition that do not regard sex as sinful and marriage as the only acceptable remedy for its connection to original sin. You have only to look in the Hebrew scriptures to find a highly sophisticated and nuanced range of approaches - the stories of Ruth, Naomi and Boaz, Esther, David, Jonathan, Hagar.... The notion that marriage is the only way that sexually active people express themselves is surely just one of many strands in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, aimed at the ability to control knowledge of the paternity of children. Its predominance has come about in cultural settings and for cultural reasons that do not always have a great deal to do with faith or with the teachings of Jesus or interpretation of the whole spectrum of biblical, rabbinic and apocryphal texts. 

The report, then, is interesting for two reasons. It is the first time that such a report by a Church of England working party contains an open acknowledgement that, where there is a massive shift in social perception such that a practice or set of practices that were previously not acceptable have come to be seen not only as acceptable, but as desirable, then this can leave the church with a problem if it does not listen and engage. Rightly, I think, the working party point out that this kind of seismic cultural shift is not  necessarily of itself a justification for re-writing theology or re-configuring traditional beliefs. However where new understandings of what it is to be human and of the deep oppression of groups of people are at stake, the church must, preferably sooner rather than later, engage with what those beyond the church are saying and learn from them. Even if the working party were not influenced by it, the Archbishop of Canterbury and many of the bishops are unlikely to forget the day that the largest attendance in the House of Lords since 1945 produced an overwhelming defeat of the bishops' objections to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act at its second reading. The Archbishop has now, on several occasions, outlined the need for the church to learn from this and the Pilling Report will, I hope, add weight to his plea.

Secondly, the report does pave a gentle way forward for progress. Its recommendation that a conversation process be set up to enable the church to hear the range of views in society can only be positive. At least the report defends the need for the Church of England to stand firm in insisting that this issue must be addressed with other provinces of the Anglican Communion - this is probably not hugely encouraging but at least it begins to set the direction of travel. I think that it's the first time I've been conscious of phrases like 'warm welcome and affirmation of presence and ministry' in respect of lesbian and gay people. I fear this is far too little, far too late and could sound patronising, but I do sense a break through similar to that on women bishops - suddenly here is an official group being moderately positive, not simply a maverick lay person or an odd cleric! Similarly, not much ground is given in terms of liturgical provision for same sex couples but at least it is acknowledged that there is a need for provision and there is an acceptance of blessings for gay partnerships. No points for condemning homophobia, I'm afraid, how could they not? And no points for doing anything to clear up the double standards on requirements around chastity for clergy and laity. 

I very much fear that the approach taken in the whole report repeats the old mistakes made with regard to admitting women to the threefold order of deacon, priest and bishop. It jumps very quickly to a pragmatic approach to mission without first dealing in any depth with the nature of what it is discussing, namely theological critique of the difference between the sexes and orientations and the ways in which they relate. The premise appears to be - here is something (same sex relationships) the tradition apparently has been held to forbid; this does not tally with modern thinking about humanity-in-the-image-of-God, or about compassion, justice and oppression. Therefore we must find a way to keep old teachings and insight while adopting the new thinking that social changes demand of us. So, instead of addressing the deep theological, physiological and sociological issues and mining into the Christian tradition for the whole range of voices that have always been present, we are encouraged to retain the old, oppressive insights fairly unexamined but at the same time jump straight into pragmatic (but dare I say not very logical or practical) responses. Women clergy have been required to practise psychological contortion for two decades because of this kind of ill-thought-out strategy and we've seen how that has nearly torn the governance of the church apart. Let's not repeat the mistake. Really.  However, the need to listen and explore is entirely right and I applaud that.