CofE ‘not giving up’ on sex within marriage, Archbishop of Canterbury says; while doing just that and endorsing gay sex
In a 2017 interview, Alistair Campbell, the former spokesperson and press secretary for Prime Minister Tony Blair, asked the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, “Is gay sex sinful?”
At the time, Welby responded, “that is a question you know very well I can’t give a straight answer to”.
Welby justified his position, adding: “[it’s] because I don’t do blanket condemnation, and I haven’t got a good answer to the question. I’ll be really honest about that. I know I haven’t got a good answer to the question.”
Last week, on 21 October, Welby appeared with Alistair Campbell again, this time on “The Rest is Politics” podcast and alongside former Conservative MP Rory Stewart.
In the conversation Campbell rather pointedly said “let’s now turn to gay sex.” To which the archbishop awkwardly responded, “I do all the time really – in the life of the Church.”
Campbell then asked, “Do you have a better answer yet?” – referring back to Welby’s aforementioned tentative, and political, answer in 2017. Welby answered that this time he did; Welby’s answer was as follows:
“What the Archbishop of York and I, and the bishops, by a majority, [though] by no means unanimous, [consider on the issue of gay sex] – and the Church is deeply split over this – where we’ve come to [on this] is to say that all sexual activity should be within a committed relationship and whether it’s straight or gay.
“In other words, we’re not giving up on the idea that sex is within marriage or civil partnership.
“We’ve put forward a proposal that where people have been through a civil partnership or a same-sex marriage/equal marriage under the 2014 Act, they should be able to come along to their local…church, and have a service of prayer and blessing for them in their lives together.
“So we accept that. Now, I think this is a long way from church same-sex marriage.”
There is much to pick up on in this statement, and he did have more to say. However, to begin with, lets address an obvious point.
This isn’t his fringe view: he has stated it is on behalf of himself, the Archbishop of York. Stephen Cottrell, and “a majority of bishops”.
This tells us, as if we hadn’t realised, that the leadership of the Church of England are now admitting in public what many had suspected they thought in private: that they no longer consider sex as being permissible solely within the confines of marriage.
Welby’s statement that sex can occur within any committed relationship, then, throws up some questionable clarification.
The idea that a CofE minister would say that sex was permissible outside of marriage, but within a “committed relationship”, may not shock many who know the CofE. However, to hear it from the Archbishop of Canterbury, and then to hear its clarification may have shocked some, including myself.
His clarification involved both the idea that civil partnerships are equitable to marriage in terms of their being a “commitment”, and that sexual activity is permissible in both heterosexual and homosexual relationships of these kinds.
To equate these generally defined “committed relationships”, or even specifically defined civil partnerships, to marriage is a bold move, to say the least.
While civil partnerships do hold civic status and value near-equivalent to marriage in UK law, for the head of the CofE to suggest that they are therefore equal to marriage as a permissible place for sex, is deeply problematic.
As Welby also points out, this is irrespective of the gender coupling of this relationship.
In terms of the idea that homosexual couples can be committed to one another, he obviously isn’t wrong. There are certainly very committed homosexual couples, and very uncommitted married heterosexual couples.
He then goes on to extend this to same-sex or so-called “equal” marriage; once again suggesting that this euphemistically named, and ontologically illogical institution, may also be a place for permissible sexual activity.
Given the media response to the revelation provided in this interview, Lambeth Palace issued a press statement.
The statement appears to reiterate that Welby personally holds these views, but seems to try to distance the position of being Archbishop of Canterbury from its incumbent, stating that his “answer does not indicate a changing of teaching from the House of Bishops”.
By stating that this is Welby’s “personal view”, but also that the archbishop remains committed to the rest of the Church that does not share this view, thereby holding the “traditional view”, it attempts to clear him and Lambeth Palace of being accused of any doctrinal change.
It’s a muddle to say the least. So why engage with, and bring about, this muddle in the first place? Why this particular conversation? Why now? And why this answer?
Well, first to note is that in the interview Welby also references the so-called Living in Love and Faith (LLF) blessings that have been approved for use in the CofE.
These blessings will allow those who have undergone a civil-partnership, or same-sex marriage, to have their union blessed in a CofE church – should the minister of that church consent to performing the service.
Welby himself has admitted he will not use these blessings. But in his latest interview with Campbell, he seemed to indicate that this may not be due to his personal wishes, but merely due to his representation of the global Anglican communion who predominantly still hold homosexuality to be sinful.
Secondly, current CofE policy seems to be that by adding enough nails to its coffin, it can be carefully buried before it can split.
As Welby points out, the CofE is deeply divided over this issue. Or, as the preceding’s at general synod seem to show, the CofE’s leadership’s desire to push through increasingly liberal policies is at odds with its congregations.
Perhaps the accidental goal here is that, if such liberal ideas can be phrased as politically as possible; be shown to be accepted by the leadership of the CofE as clearly as possible; be pushed on the laity as conclusively as possible, then perhaps the CofE can die and become an establishment corpse rather than a mutilated divided body.
Thirdly, and perhaps most fundamentally, it is because the CofE has abandoned the traditions of the true Church; catholic, orthodox and its own.
At the Lambeth conference in 1930, the CofE first allowed contraception in certain circumstances – resolution 15 stated contraception could be used “where there is a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood”.
Overtime, this, like many other issues, slid down the slippery slope of moral questionability until contraception was no longer an issue in the CofE.
The consequences have been that, whilst the theory of the Church – Canons of The Church of England B.30 for example – still clearly state that the purpose of marriage is “for the procreation and nurture of children”, sex and marriage have become divorced from procreation in practice.
Following the 1930 Lambeth conference, this then spread out to other Christian denominations and wider society, and in the space of just under a century, the majority Christian position on contraception in England has gone from one of being morally unacceptable to full and unrestrained acceptance.
As Catholics will be well aware, the removal, whether in just practice or in theology too, of procreation from the marriage definition is why homosexual marriage was able to become acceptable.
It is also the reason why the Archbishop of Canterbury can make a statement that, regardless of whether they are heterosexual or married, sex is seemingly permissible in any committed relationship.
Since in practise sex, for the CofE, has become divorced from procreation and predominantly about love or expressions of affection, the procreative aspect can become secondary, and thus not an impediment to sex outside of marriage or in homosexual contexts.
Obviously, a homosexual couple is capable of love and affection, and ostracising gay couples, or calling for their imprisonment or worse should be categorically wrong. As Pope Francis has often pointed out, there is no place for homophobia in the Church.
However, the rejection of the orthodox Christian view that sex is for procreation is why Welby can now admit that he, and many in the CofE leadership, are permissive of sex both outside of marriage and in homosexual relationships.
In the face of such issues, the Catholic Church needs to hold firm to its teachings on contraception in order to prevent situations where sexual ethics snowball into statements like Welby’s.
