Over ten years ago, my former PhD supervisor Andrew Shanks and I tried to write a book together about the importance of the theologian Gillian Rose. In the end, we found it hard to agree, so he wrote the book – and I wrote a forward about why it was so hard to write the book together.
All this was somewhat ironic, given that the book – Against Innocence: Gillian Rose’s Reception and Gift of Faith – was substantially about the ethics of compromise. I was reminded of this exercise by Lisa Nandy, Labour MP for Wigan, after she voted with the Government and wrote:
“In my view you betray the people you represent when you believe that your own moral purity and principles come before trying to improve things for others, however hard. I could stand on the sidelines and wave a flag, or make some decisions. I choose to try.”
This is a praiseworthy and mature sentiment, very much the position adopted by Shanks, and I wonder why I couldn’t go along with it at the time – and whether, ten years on, I’ve changed my mind.
Though Against Innocence was unashamedly theoretical, the backdrop to the book was anything but. The Church of England had been convulsed by a culture war about homosexuality ever since 2003 when a gay Anglican clergyman, Jeffrey John, was nominated to be the Bishop of Reading. In response to the worldwide outcry from conservative critics, the Archbishop of the time, Rowan Williams, asked John to withdraw himself from consideration.
There is no doubt that Williams was in a difficult position. For although it was easy to imagine that his instincts on homosexuality were entirely progressive – not that he would be necessarily comfortable with that description – he also had other considerations. He believed (probably rightly) that were an openly gay man to become a bishop in the Church of England, many parts of the African Church in particular would withdraw themselves from the structures of the Anglican Communion.
This was not just a spiritual issue, as the structures of this communion made a very substantial difference to the material welfare of a great many people, among the most vulnerable in the world.
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