Listening and Mission
A Response to Dr Ephraim Radner Truthful Language and Orderly Separation

Phil Groves
The Facilitator for the Listening Process in the Anglican Communion

In his paper Truthful Language and Orderly Separation Dr Radner has offered the Anglican Communion a long reflection in the post Lambeth Conference context. In it he urges us to take seriously the reality that 'A change in practice for gay inclusivists has become impossible.' I make no judgement as to the truth of the premise, except to say that it is one shared by many in the Communion. There is a sense that a door has been opened and cannot be closed. It is not only traditionalists who hold this view but many who are prepared or who have been prepared to bless same sex unions or who are themselves gay and in partnered relationships and have no intention to leave the church. However the future is always hard to predict and not something upon which to build a theology.

What concerns me in this response is Dr Radner's call for the Listening Process to be solely focused on 'learning of homosexual needs in face of civil violence and mistreatment in concrete instances and responding to such mistreatment as a church'.

I was appointed in 2006 to be the Facilitator of the Listening Process and it is my words on the Anglican Communion website which Dr Radner quotes as he analyses the 'listening process' in the Anglican Communion. Over the past two years I have observed that there is less of a process than a number of processes. My mandate is to monitor these processes and to share resources throughout the Communion.[1] The idea of a single listening process is one that denies the incarnational reality of a local church in a global context. Michael Poon puts it excellently in his contribution to The Anglican Communion and Homosexuality:

'To commit ourselves to listen to the experience of homosexual persons and we wish to assure them that they are loved by God' (Resolution 1.10c) is a Christian radical act of discipleship if and only if this takes place in the concrete. It cannot be reduced into a diocesan, provincial or Communion-wide programme. We meet and listen in the concrete proximate relations: among our friends and family members not of our choosing. There we do not simply face a 'homosexual', as if he/she is part of a victimized class or a sociological unit. Still less do I and (he/she) know fully what homosexuality is about. Indeed, we can learn much from the medical sciences and other disciplines on what homosexuality is. Yet what often is ignored is that the homosexual experience may carry different meaning to different people in different places.[2]

The section Dr Radner chose to quote from the Listening Process website reflects on the experience of a pseudonymous gay evangelical living in singleness asking for empathy, not dialogue.[3] The plea is to hear and to love. Dr Radner recognises the significance of this demand describing it as 'a worthy, indeed a deeply worthy goal'.

However, Dr Radner then seeks to limit the process of listening. He writes:

I suggest a simple goal, one that also coheres with pertinent Lambeth resolutions and subsequent Communion commitments: that for the moment the "listening process" seek one end only, viz. learning of homosexual needs in face of civil violence and mistreatment in concrete instances and responding to such mistreatment as a church. Clearly there is a sense that this is needed in many places within the Communion, and this goal requires steady work.

Dr Radner's proposal may seem a sensible approach - the requirement to oppose violence towards lesbian and gay people and their mistreatment is certainly a significant part of our present calling - but I believe it to be an insufficient response to our evangelical calling.

The Anglican Communion has made consistent commitments to oppose the victimisation and diminishment of gay and lesbian people. Earlier this year the Joint Standing Committee of the ACC and Primates endorsed the Don't Throw Stones statement, which is published on a website of the Anglican Communion along with some supporting resources.[4] The Don't Throw Stones statement develops the consistent stand of the Instruments of Communion probably best articulated in the communiqué of the 2005 Primates meeting in Dromantine which said:

'...the victimisation or diminishment of human beings whose affections happen to be ordered towards people of the same sex is anathema to us.'

Further work is undoubtedly required to make the statement effective.

Controversy emerging from the Gafcon press conferences showed that such statements are no longer optional for traditionalists, rather they are mandatory and by many they are willingly embraced. Dr Radner has himself argued for requirement to oppose homophobia and taken a lead in speaking publicly and clearly.[5] This is a worthy goal, to echo Dr Radner, a deeply worthy goal. However, as a simple aim for a 'listening process' I contend it is not sufficient, especially for evangelicals.

In Mission in the 21st Century - commissioned by CMS to assist the bishops at the recent Lambeth Conference - Bishop Zac Nyringe writes on the first Mark of Mission. In his characteristically vibrant style he engages with the call 'To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom'. Bishop Nyringe's article is especially significant due to his passion for evangelism, which he lives out in his life as well as his words. He argues that listening is a vital element of that calling and reflecting on the evangelistic method of Paul in Acts 17 he says:

Listening and dialogue are rooted in the conviction that every culture, era or society has within it something equivalent to 'the unknown God' of the Athenians, which ought to be the starting point of the proclamation. The God of the Kingdom that is good news to all the peoples and cultures of the world is the God of all history. Every culture and epoch in history has within it signs, pointing to his presence among them. But there is more to listening and dialogue: since the good news is about the Kingdom of God in creation, proclamation is rooted in the conviction that every culture has within it the capacity not only to receive the good news but to be a transmitter. Listening and dialogue has to do with learning the language of that culture and context in order to proclaim the message in its idiom. This is the basis for the priority of translation in proclamation. In this sense all authentic Gospel proclamation must entail dialogue and translation. This ought to serve as a corrective to many approaches that do not take seriously the listening and dialogue process. It is in listening to a people's story that we are able to make a connection with the story of Christ; and in listening a new language is learned in which the message is proclaimed.[6]

The whole chapter is worthy of careful study, it is inspirational, but in this section I found a resonance with where my prayer and study have led me in developing my own attitude to the process of listening. Sadly, Zac and the Ugandan bishops were not with us at the Lambeth Conference. We missed his eager mind and dynamic presence, but I printed out his full reflection on Acts 17, with no additional comment, and distributed it to every bishop in their Indaba groups. Listening is a biblical requirement for evangelism and listening to gay and lesbian people is as significant as listening to the poor, to women and to children, we are called to listen to people of every tongue, tribe and culture.

During 2006 and 2007 Prof O'Donovan used the Fulcrum website to offer seven 'Sermons on the Subjects of the Day' culminating in a provocative and profound sermon entitled 'Good News for Gay Christians'. In this sermon he captures what is for me the essence of the task of listening. O'Donovan asks us to escape from viewing the gay Christian as victim worthy of our compassion and instead to ask hard questions. For him the key questions are about the good news the church has to offer the gay Christian and the good news the gay Christian has to offer the world and the church.

For if the gay Christian is to be addressed as a believer and a disciple, a recipient of the good news, he has to be addressed as a potential evangelist, too. But we must take this second question a little further. The good news meant for the human race is meant for the church, too. What good news does the gay Christian have to bring to the church?[7]

Some assume listening is a soft option but O'Donovan leaves us in no doubt that we must not limit the good news to easy answers and wishful thinking:

Yet to preach the Gospel, whether to Christians or non-Christians, is not a simple matter of offering reassurance and comfort. The Gospel, too, has its "hard words". The righteousness of Jesus Christ is not comfort without demand, any more than it is demand without comfort. It is never less than that demanding comfort by which God makes more of us than we thought it possible to become. And from this there seems to follow an important implication: the Gospel must be preached to the gay Christian on precisely the same terms that it is preached to any other person.[8]

The danger of the way offered to us by Dr Radner is that by limiting the listening process to the simple goal of learning of homosexual needs in the face of civil violence we will commit the church to a liberal agenda. While gay and lesbian people are to be offered protection in society, they are not to be offered in Christ the same assurance of forgiveness or the same demand of obedience as straight people. The implication of his understanding is that gay people are to be the object of the protection by the largesse of a heterosexual church. Gay and lesbian people are to be considered as victims the church needs to protect and thereby they are effectively externalised from the church as objects of our social concern, rather than recipients of salvation and full members of the body of Christ. This raises two problems, which in my view are insurmountable:

Firstly, it is not possible for the church to be taken seriously as an agent of civil rights for gay and lesbian people unless we stand with them in the struggle for such rights. My experience is that unless gay Christians stand with straight Christians in opposing victimisation and discrimination our witness is never taken seriously. In the campaigns against poverty our voice as a church is powerful and credible because we have rich and poor members campaigning together. Any stand we take on gay and lesbian rights will be irrelevant and is likely to be rejected if it is not made alongside gay and lesbian people.

Secondly, the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the church is a denial of the command to proclaim the good news to all. Only in listening to gay and lesbian Christians (however they self identify)[9] can we offer the good news to gay and lesbian non-Christians. And not only to gay and lesbian people but also to their families, their friends and their work colleagues. If for traditionalists, almost by definition, the good news cannot mean the blessing of same sex unions, it does not relieve us as evangelicals of the task of continually discerning and proclaiming what the good news is. Indeed the task is made more urgent in a world that is quick to cast us as those who deny the hope of joy and the opponents of liberty. We proclaim freedom, release and joyful hope, but our duty is to go beyond saying those words and to be able to articulate them in a way that leads people to experience their power in their lives.

O'Donovan contends that the acceptance of the blessings of gay unions is merely a simple way out of this challenge, but he deliberately does not offer us significant alternatives, except the demand to listen to gay Christians and seek to discern with them the realities of the good news. This is the significance of the methodology of biblical ethics outlined by Richard Burridge in his recently published Imitating Jesus.[10]

Of course, if the good news is to be preached to the gay Christian in exactly the same terms it is preached to any other person we have to ask why we need to listen specifically to gay Christians. For me the answer lies in O'Donovan's belief that we have to ask about the good news gay Christians bring to the church.

Having had the privilege of listening to and developing friendships with many gay and lesbian Christians over recent years I know that they have renewed and deepened my faith. I am constantly struck by how gay and lesbian Christians have gone through profound processes of self discovery. They frequently speak to me of, at some point in their personal and spiritual development, experiencing the rejection of easy identity with the community of their peers and a search for who they are in relation to the world and to God. I am enriched by the stories of being embraced by a real and living God who loves them as they are, but who calls each one into a relationship with Him.

In the 1990s Prof O'Donovan took the lead in developing the St Andrew's Day Statement.[11] It was intended to be common ground upon which listening could take place but caused controversy partly because it was assumed it was a conclusion of a theological process, not a foundation for engaging in conversations. A sentence in the Statement that seemed to be most problematic with gay and lesbian Christians was one questioning the reality of gay identity. It contrasted such an identity with an affirmation that our redeemed identity lies in Christ. When I commissioned two theologians to consider sexuality and identity with gay and lesbian Christians for The Anglican Communion and Homosexuality, they found that to those to whom they spoke the statement was unhelpful. They reported back to me that this was not because the gay and lesbian Christians did not agree with it, but because they felt it was too obvious to comment upon. However, I found them saying to me that straight Christians living 'normal' lives in conformity at home and at work can actually find it harder to see how their identity is in the Christ that saves rather than the church which was always their home.

The effectiveness of advertising for the Alpha course is based on its ability to question the assumptions and identity of the target audience. The dominant motif of Alpha has always been the question mark intending to unsettle the comfortable conformity of the target audience with questions such as: 'Is this it?' It is my experience that gay and lesbian Christians do not need a marketing campaign to ask themselves the deep questions of existence and identity. They are always seeking to better understand their identity in Christ. Encounter with gay Christians has challenged me to question if I know that my primary identity is in Christ.

A process of listening to the experience of gay and lesbian Christians should challenge how our churches live out their calling. When I was appointed as an evangelist to young families in a conventional church in the English midlands the church expected me to deliver families who would conform to their notions of church. It came as a shock, therefore, when I challenged them to change the church in order for them to welcome families. This was not about theology, it was about service times, the music and the facilities. I have many contacts with gay Christians worshipping in conservative churches who take the lordship of Christ in their life as their guiding principle and who accept biblical authority and I frequently hear stories of prejudice and fear. They express to me a feeling that conservative leaders are often keen to parade them, but they are not willing to support them when the going gets tough.

One possible result of a process of listening is that it may require the transformation of our churches in to communities where the God given human desire for companionship in friendship is a genuine possibility. It may be the responsibility of the community of the church to move beyond polite conversation over coffee after a service and a once a week house group and become a place of genuine community living. We may have to address what it means to encourage genuine committed friendships and, as James Jones has encouraged us to do, develop a theology of friendship rooted in the covenant between David and Jonathan or Naomi and Ruth. We cannot do this without the voice of those who experience same sex attraction or it will remain empty, untried and unreal. I know this is dangerous, but at what point did Christ ask us to avoid the dangerous path?

I have a deep respect for Dr Radner and his wider analysis of the ecclesial context may be right, I make no judgement on that. However, the listening clause in Lambeth I.10 cannot be the prerogative of the liberal and focused solely on human rights, it is an essential biblical demand and if ignored I believe our missiological task will be abrogated and our churches impoverished.

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Endnotes

[1]http://www.anglicancommunion.org/communion/acc/meetings/acc13/resolutions.cfm#s12

[2]Michael Poon in The Anglican Communion and Homosexuality (ed Phil Groves) SPCK 2008, 40

[3]A Gay-Straight Christian Dialogue, 'Michael' and 'Chris' (Grove, 2005)

[4]www.dontthrowstones.info

[5]'Human Rights, Homosexuality and the Anglican Communion: Reflections in Light of Nigeria' Ephraim Radner and Andrew Goddard

See also: 'Beyond Homophobia' Paul Cameron

'Sexual Sin' Justin Thaker

[6]Mission in the 21st Century (ed Andrew Walls and Cathy Ross - DLT)

[7]www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/?179

[8]Ibid

[9]They may not seek to describe themselves as anything other than male or female, or they may choose identifiers such as post gay, queer, ex-gay, or as experiencing same sex attraction.

[10]Richard A Burridge, Imitating Jesus: An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics, Grand Rapids/ Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans, 2007
See also 'Being Biblical? Slavery, Sexuality, and the Inclusive Community' Richard Burridge

[11]www.ceec.info/library/positional/St%20Andrew%27s%20Day%20Statement.rtf
See also 'Reading the St. Andrew's Day Statement' Oliver O'Donovan