Evangelical Futures: What worldview are CofE evangelicals actually having to grapple with?

Worldviews: we all have them. They shape our understanding of the Bible and the world around us. 

Christians have always had to marry Biblical orthodoxy with their contemporary circumstances. In 2022, we inhabit a decidedly, often aggressively, post-Christian society with ever-decreasing church attendance. 

The Church of England (CofE) still retains an important place within the public sphere, both here and abroad, but the struggle faced by senior CofE clergy is how to persuade non-Christians that Christianity is still relevant. This century has witnessed significant societal upheaval, not least surrounding race, sexuality, and transgender rights. ‘Living in Love and Faith’ (LLF) demonstrates how the CofE leaders aim to engage with these issues, so provides us with access to the worldview of its proponents within the House of Bishops and its editors, and how they think 21st-century Christianity should be practised within secular Britain.

LLF starts by adopting the term ‘lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-sexual, intersex, and others’ (LGBTI+) to cohere different groups into a single homogenous entity. But LGB groups themselves increasingly contest this term, as it subsumes disparate aims and goals of specific groupings into an amorphous ‘whole’ and, from a practical perspective, promotes ‘trans’ ideology over biological sex. 

Lesbians are increasingly vocal about the sustained pressure they face to have sex with heterosexual transwomen who retain a penis. When they refuse, they are labelled transphobic. There is no acknowledgement in LLF, however, that there are contradictions within ‘trans’ ideology that remain to be resolved, or of the consequential impact that different interpretations of ‘trans’ rights have on other groups. There is also no consideration of professionals who are unsettled by practices within gender dysphoria clinics: that rapid-onset gender dysphoria can have social components; that some children are coerced into transitioning; or that the risk of suicide in trans people is no higher than for other mental health conditions (p.96; using NHS data). The lack of balanced discussion in LLF tacitly supports ‘trans’ ideology – without explanation as to what that means – at the expense of biological reality (the authors should learn about Keira Bell and then reflect on the case study on p.210). 

This creates significant pastoral issues not addressed anywhere in LLF. The CofE finds itself full of vulnerable people, including natal women. What reassurances can women have from senior clergy that their spaces will be respected and defended even if ‘trans’ activist pressure mounts? The urgent question that the CofE needs to answer is: are transwomen women? There is surely only one answer for Christians: Jesus was carried in a uterus for nine months and born of a woman. Salvation relies not only the biology of Jesus, but also Mary. Transwomen clearly exist, but they are not biological women. Womanhood, according to the Bible, is not a social construct but a biological and spiritual category. It is this lack of reflection that means LLF equates gender dysphoria with ‘untreated pain’ (p.199), but provides no reflection that for the persecuted church simply being a Christian could lead to physical abuse and death – a situation not present for any identity in Britain?

LLF argues that, as variations in biological sex exist, we should ‘widen our understanding of the natural variability of human bodies’ (pp. 336, 339), but this presents a scientifically and medically illiterate view of biology. Intersex conditions, like other chromosomal abnormalities, are not biologically ‘normal’, but are incredibly rare and often require extensive medical and social support. Much of LLF is founded on the assumption that gender identity is a social construct, chosen according to first-person experience and belief. Yet here LLF attempts to justify gender identity in general from the specific case of biological variation – this is not a logical transition. It also co-opts the dignity of those with intersex conditions in order to support transgenderism from biology, a contradictory ideological position that is pastorally careless and not supported by any first-person accounts from intersex Christians. 

Identity is central to the arguments proposed in LLF. The overwhelming emphasis is that identity is psychological, that is how and who we feel we are. This stress on self-declaration and self-expression is recognisable as an atheist, utilitarian stance (see, for instance, Derek Parfit), which views identity as a series of unconnected, self-defined psychological states and rejects permanence. As many of us can attest, our subjective identity fluctuates according to many things: age, education, peers, etc. How I feel today will not be how I feel tomorrow, yet I still have an abiding identity across time. 

One important Christian concept missing entirely from LLF is the hypostasis. This term speaks to an eternal identity in God’s image given to us by God. Christian orthodoxy emphasises this eternal identity and if we believe in salvation and final judgment, then we have to believe that our identity is beyond psychological (despite assertions otherwise; p.200). God’s love is not dependent on my self-constructed identity; He loves my eternal identity that He created. 

For those that would argue against the primacy of hypostatic identity over psychological identity, consider on what basis a newborn baby is loved. It has no self-derived identity. We cannot appeal to psychological identity for it does not exist. We love babies simply because they exist and have an irreplaceable position within humanity. The utilitarian position is that babies do not matter, placing LLF in a place of self-contradiction. It is caveated in LLF that identity is more wide-ranging than just the subjective aspect of human experience, but the absence of anything approaching hypostasis in LLF is saddening particularly with its emphasis on atheist philosophical concepts. 

LLF questions whether the CofE should bless or baptise someone after gender transition. Aside from the theological implications of contradicting the Nicene Creed (also not discussed), do proponents feel that they would be the baptising/blessing an eternal or psychological identity? Is it presumed that God does not know all of our psychological identities across time? What if someone transitioned, was blessed/baptised by the CofE, and then detransitioned – what would that mean for their rejected identity? The CofE would be complicit in the false identification of that individual’s gender transition and thereby a co-author of their pain. These are likely to be rare occurrences but they could cause great harm to the person and the church community involved. 

There can be little doubt that the over-zealous application of orthodoxy has been used as an excuse for the abuse of sexual and identity minorities throughout church history. LLF’s assertion is that this is because we in Britain assume that normality is ‘White, or Middle-Class, or Educated, or Male’ (WMCEM; p.199) and WMCEM fuels ‘stigmatisation, marginalisation and exclusion’. These ahistorical assertions are not presented as conjecture, supported by evidence, but rather as truisms. Yet LLF fails to engage with more ancient denominations not under the influence of WMCEM (e.g. the Coptic, Yazidi and Ethiopian churches). If ‘sound interpretation’ or ‘good theology’ is demonstrably founded on over 5,000 years of Judeo-Christian orthodoxy, then how can that be shown to be a ‘white, male, middle-class, affluent, and Western interpretation [of] theology’ (p.328)? 

LLF then introduces abstract concepts such as ‘demands for discipline and self-denial have too often been used to reinforce uneven distributions of power within communities … they have been used to keep people in the place assigned to them in culture’s hierarchies’ (p.237). This is ironic given the top-down nature of LLF. The focus on WMCEM and the modes and patterns of power and hierarchy in LLF has an intellectual lineage arising from a worldview founded in Marxist and postmodern thought, summarised as ‘identitarianism’. This worldview asserts that society is formed by culturally constructed systems of power and hierarchies. Identitarians deny objective Truth, believing that there is truth available only through lived experience and in the terms they employ; we are all aware of the resulting concept of ‘lived experience’. One problem with Marxism is that its usually middle-class acolytes could not readily identify with the ‘oppressed’, and so they developed a grievance society of oppressed peoples based on specific identities, such as race, sexuality, and gender. It is no coincidence that this pseudo-class war emerged from mainly white, middle-class, and educated university settings using ideas from WMCEM (like Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, and the Frankfurt School). 

Ultimately, the identitarian views espoused in LLF are not philosophical or ethical ideas – they are nakedly political. (It cannot be argued otherwise whilst the statues, graves, and reputations of, for instance, Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels are considered ‘unproblematic’ despite the clear anti-Semitic, sexist, and racist beliefs of these men.) Identitarian ideology is divisive. It has neither interest in eternal notions of humanity nor any concept of progress or reconciliation – it is entirely concerned with psychological experience. One concern for LLF should be the effects of trying to replace Christian orthodoxy with actual WMCE university-based concepts (such as white privilege, systemic racism, power distribution, etc.). Moreover, LLF does not mention the overseas Anglican community who are more likely to support an orthodox position on many of the issues raised in LLF. Given LLF is likely to have been written largely by WMCE people, this non-engagement with Anglicans overseas could be interpreted as ‘classically racist’, especially if the reason for non-engagement was because it was known what answers these other communities might provide. 

LLF applies this postmodern linguistic revisionism to other concepts. We are asked to imagine marriage as the ‘solemnization of a covenantal relationship’ (although it should be noted that the sacramental nature of marriage is discussed as well). If the CofE is to distill marriage and sex to a human rite of passage, how will it react when heterosexual civil partners want to be blessed but not married (as many view marriage as patriarchal) or when the polyamorous couple who have no wish to honour the call to monogamy, but request to have their relationship nevertheless solemnized? Marriage in the Bible is presented not as an emotional or companionship category, but a spiritual one – LLF fails to present cogent reasons for revising or abandoning this orthodoxy. LLF also diminishes love to a Freudian concept when it equates David and Jonathan’s relationship as sexual. The erosion of their love to ‘simply’ homosexual is a cheapening of the types of relationships that humans can have with members of the same sex. It is this paucity of thought that leads LLF to speculate that the Biblical writers may not have seen ‘committed, loving same-sex sexual relationships that we encounter today’ (pp.279,290), despite living in licentious Greek and Roman societies where ‘non-Biblical’ relationships were commonplace. As God is unchanging and omniscient, would it not also seem strange that God, knowing that loving same-sex relationships exist, would not have condoned them at some point in human history? 

The tacit approval of these Marxist/postmodern ideas within the CofE yokes it to a worldview that dissolves the nature of our biological reality, rejects dialogue and discourse, and is antithetical to Christianity. It could be argued that LLF is not an academic document, yet so much of it derives from ideologically-driven social sciences (an interested reader might like to read about the Grievance Studies Affair for more information). 

The absolute strength of LLF is the call to pastoral care, and it should make all Christians consider our approach to those with different sexualities and identities. These sections are tremendously important and are written sensitively. The CofE needs to serve all those made in the image of God, but without resorting to concepts distanced from Christian orthodoxy. LLF says that church is not always a ‘safe space’, but safety is often interpreted as the absence of challenge. This is inherently solipsistic given that Christianity is not a singular but a community pursuit. Church should be open and welcoming to all, but we should not place gender, sexuality, etc. ahead of being just a Christian. 

For perhaps the first time in its history, the CofE can witness to a world that shares little of its own worldview. Instead, it has fallen for modern ideologies that actually impede this mission, ideologies not just limited to issues of identity and sexuality. How will pews fill if middle-class bishops declare that the CofE is institutionally racist, yet not one of them gives up their seat for a minority candidate, thinks anything of Michael Nazir-Ali’s departure, or engages with the impact of LLF on the worldwide Anglican Communion? The truly revolutionary report would have been why working-class people stopped attending church, but this would undoubtedly generate less social media response and provide harder challenges to ameliorate. Ultimately, if the CofE tacitly agrees with Paul Bayes that we should ‘let the world set the agenda’, then LLF is the resulting document. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches will weather this period of human history far better than the CofE, as they remain rooted in their own history, theology, and philosophy. Through LLF, the CofE has told a story of a very specific worldview; it is a shame that it is not its own.