It is not my habit to comment on the contents of sermons in this blog. However, the Dean of St Edmundsbury, The Very Reverend Joe Hawes, used his sermon at St Edmundsbury Cathedral last Sunday to comment on the Living in Love and Faith process[1] and it seemed to me to be important not to let the points he made about this subject go unchallenged.

The Dean makes five points in relation to the LLF process, and I shall consider each of them in turn.

The first point he makes is that he feels able to affirm: ‘… with heartfelt certainty, that although I get it wrong pretty regularly and need to hearken to the Baptist’s cry to repent, who I am in my creation, is essentially what God intended. That I am not an aberration, a mistake on God’s part, but, like all of you, a gift from God, and trying in my life, to be a gift back to God through loving service.’

The question that this statement raises is who the Dean thinks God created him to be. If he means that his creation as a male human being made in the image and likeness of God is willed by God and is ‘very good’ (Genesis 1:31), I don’t think that there is anybody in the Church of England, even those who the Dean calls ‘hard line fundamentalists,’ who would disagree with him.

If, however, what the Dean means is that he was created by God to be a gay man then there would be many who would rightly disagree with him. This because, to quote Sean Doherty (who is himself same-sex attracted) describing his own realisation about how God had made him: ‘God did not create straight women, straight men, gay women and gay men. God created two sexes, with the capacity to relate to one another sexually.’ [2]

This truth is taught in the creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2 and, as Paul notes in Romans 1:26-27, it is also taught by nature in the sense that the observation of human biology teaches us that human beings have bodies that are designed to engage into the kind of ‘one flesh’ sexual union with a member of the opposite sex that has the capacity to produce offspring.

In the light of this truth the Pauline teaching that same-sex sexual attraction and the same-sex sexual activity that results from it are a result of the Fall makes perfect sense. If human beings are created to have sex with members of the opposite sex, it follows that desires and actions that are contrary to this must be seen not as a reflection of God’s original creative intention, but as a result of the distortion of the created order consequent upon demonic and human rebellion against God.

The second point the Dean makes is that: ‘I, as a consequence of believing myself NOT to be an aberration, claim access to the deep and ancient wisdom about human relationships which scripture, tradition and sacrament teach us is marriage. The exclusive, faithful, lifelong journey which we believe is reflected in God’s covenantal relationship with us and Christ’s relationship with the Church.’

If what the Dean means here is that as a male human being, he should have the possibility of entering marriage with someone of the opposite sex, again no one would disagree with him. However, in context what he means is that as a gay person he can rightly claim access to marriage with a person of his own sex.

This argument is problematic, because as the Dean is surely aware, what ‘scripture, tradition and sacrament’ universally tell us is that marriage has been created by God as a relationship between a man and a woman, and not between two men or two women. In the words of Darrin Belousek in his study Marriage, Scripture and the Church:

‘Scripture, consistently, presents a single picture of marriage and approves a single pattern of sexual relations: male- female union. Jesus summarizes this witness: ‘the two’ of ‘male and female’ joined into ‘one flesh.’ The Holy Spirit has woven this pattern of holy union throughout Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, in the form, function, and figure of marriage. Tradition, East and West, also has consistently taught a single standard of sex and marriage: marriage is man-woman monogamy; all sex outside man-woman monogamy is sin. This doctrine has been taught always by the church, beginning with the apostles’ testimony to Jesus teaching; It has been proclaimed throughout the worldwide church, among all people in every place and epoch, as God’s will for sex and marriage; it has been articulated by apologetic writings and theological treatises, transmitted through baptismal catechesis and canonical discipline, celebrated in monastic vows and nuptial rites.’ [3]

What this means is that someone who calls a same-sex relationship ‘marriage’ is not acting in accordance with the ‘deep and ancient wisdom’ offered by Scripture and the Church universal but is instead rejecting that wisdom.

If we ask why the Dean thinks that this wisdom should be rejected, the answer is that he holds that the result of the belief that marriage can only be between people of the opposite sex is that ‘gay clergy have been condemned to lives of loneliness, self-denial and self-loathing.’ The problem with this argument is that there are innumerable counter examples of same-sex attracted people (both clergy and lay people) who have lived in the light of the Church’s traditional teaching, either as people who are single (and sexually abstinent), or as those married to members of the opposite sex, and whose lives have not been marked by ‘loneliness, self-denial and self-loathing’ as a result.[4] The evidence shows that the claim of inevitable misery which the Dean makes is simply untrue.

The third point the Dean makes is that there is nothing ‘life giving, holy and good’ about the compromise that has resulted from the LLF process in which only limited forms of blessing (not including weddings) are allowed for same-sex relationships, and in which those in same-sex sexual relationships are not allowed to be ordained.

Those who accept the traditional Christian wisdom concerning marriage and sexual ethics would agree with the Dean that the compromise which has allowed blessings but not marriages is neither life giving, nor holy, nor good. However, from their perspective this is because if, as Scripture and tradition have always taught ‘all sex outside man-woman monogamy is sin’ then any blessing of a same-sex sexual relationship (whatever form this takes) is necessarily wrong for the simple reason that you cannot rightly ask God to bless sin.

The current compromise is wrong not because, as the Dean thinks, the Church of England should have permitted same-sex marriages to be solemnised, but because it has permitted the blessing of that which Scripture and tradition teach is contrary to the will of God. It is not that the Church of England has not yet gone far enough, but that it has already gone too far.

On the issue of the prohibition of the ordination of those in same-sex sexual relationships, what the Dean fails to recognise is that this also follows on from the traditional Christian wisdom concerning marriage and sexual ethics. The simple point here is that, to quote the 1662 Ordinal, the clergy are called to provide ‘wholesome examples and patterns to the flock of Christ.’ Those who are living lives of unrepentant sexual sin cannot provide such examples and patterns and therefore they cannot rightly be ordained. This necessarily excludes those in sexually active same sex relationships from ordination because ‘all sex outside man-woman monogamy is sin.’

The fourth point the Dean makes is that:

‘The Jesus I encounter in Scripture is one whose teaching and practice challenged tradition, treated women, gentiles, the excluded, with compassion and respect. I find nothing inconsistent with his teaching and practice and the full inclusion for which so many long, and towards which in this regard, the Church seems unable to make progress.’

On this point the Dean is right to says the testimony of the gospels is that Jesus’ ‘teaching and practice challenged tradition’ and that he ‘treated women, gentiles, the excluded, with compassion and respect.’  However, what he fails to recognise is that testimony of the gospels regarding Jesus’ teaching about the continuing validity of the Torah, including its prohibition of homosexual activity as an ‘abomination’ in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13  (Matthew 5:17-20), and about what makes people unclean in the eyes of God (Mark 7:14-22/Matthew 15:10-20) precludes the idea that Jesus accepted same-sex sexual relationships.

In the words of Michael Brown:

‘Jesus spoke very clearly not only in reaffirming the standards of sexual morality taught in the Torah, but also in stating decisively that all sexual acts outside of marriage are defiling and sinful, to be listed side by side with evil thoughts, murder, theft, false witness, and slander, among others.’ [5]

Furthermore, in his teaching on marriage and divorce in Matthew 19:3-12 and Mark 10:2-12 Jesus reiterates the teaching of Genesis 1 and 2 that the God who made human beings male and female ordained marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman  (‘a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife’ – Matthew 19:5).

Taken together this gospel evidence makes it clear that we cannot appeal to Jesus in support of same-sex sexual relationships or same-sex marriages (which is what the Dean means by ‘full inclusion’), since we would be going against his recorded teaching.

The fifth and final point the Dean makes is that:

‘… although it is true that the Church which marries the spirit of the age will end up a widow, I find myself increasingly wondering about how the Church of England can still claim to speak for a nation which has made leaps and bounds towards the inclusion and celebration of its gay and lesbian citizens, while remaining demonstrably institutionally discriminatory against them.’

The question raised by this statement is whether it is the job of the Church of England to ‘speak for the nation’ in the sense of giving expression to its values and convictions. Surely this depends on the extent to which these values and convictions align with the will of God? If this is not the case, as with current British acceptance of same-sex relationships,  then the Church’s role has to be to declare that this is the case and call the nation back to obedience to God and it cannot do this if its own teaching and practice have become compromised by listening to the world rather than to God.

In summary, what we have seen is the each of the five points made by the Dean are unpersuasive and that they therefore do not provide a basis for continuing further with the LLF process in the New Year.

This fact is important because from a liberal perspective what the Dean says in his sermon is not idiosyncratic. As anyone who has followed the debate about sexual ethics in the Church of England will be aware, the five points the Dean makes are the key points that liberals in general have been making throughout the LLF process and in the decades leading up to it. What the Dean is offering in his sermon is the basic liberal argument for the Church of England continuing the LLF process until it reaches the point of unreserved acceptance and affirmation of gay and lesbian relationships and same-sex marriages. However, as we have seen, the argument does not hold water. The cupboard is bare. The emperor has no clothes.

This being the case, when the House of Bishops meet next Tuesday [16 December] the decision that they should rationally make is that the LLF process should be brought to an end and should be replaced instead by an initiative to promote the understanding and acceptance of traditional Christian sexual ethics across the Church of England and to support the important work being undertaken by Living Out and the True Freedom Trust to help those with same-sex attraction to discover the joy and fulfilment which come from living as obedient disciples of Jesus Christ.

[1] Nic Tall, ‘Dean of St Edmundsbury Speaks Out on LGBT+ Inclusion,’ at: https://togethercofe.org.uk/dean of-st-edmundsbury-speaks-out-on-lgbt-inclusion/.

[2] Sean Doherty, The Only Ways is Ethics – Part 1 :Sex and Marriage (Milton Keynes: Authentic, 2015), p.10.

[3] Darrin Belousek, Marriage, Scripture and the Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021), KindleEdition, p.284.

[4] See, for example, Doherty, Ch.1, Rosaria Butterfield, The secret thoughts of an unlikely convert (Pittsburgh: Crown and Covenant, 2014) and Ed Shaw (ed), A Better Love (Epsom: Good Book Company, 2025).

[5] Michael Brown, Can you be Gay and Christian?  (Lake Mary: Front Line, 2014), p.132.

You can read this blog and others by Martin Davie here.