00:00:00.000 - 00:00:36.660

Could you tell me, to begin with, a little bit about growing up, when, where, parents, siblings? Yeah, sure. Okay, so I moved around quite a lot because my dad's a Methodist minister. So I was born in Rotherham, lived in Leicester, Sheffield, Norfolk, so all my secondary education was in Norfolk. And one brother, two years older than me, went to a rather weird school which was a

00:00:37.820 - 00:01:07.720

co-educational state boarding school. It was a day and morning school, but that was in, it's called Wyndham College, and I was a day pupil for the first kind of five years, and my dad moved again, so I boarded for the sixth form. And then, yeah, I went to university in Cambridge, theology. Surprisingly. So, do you mind me asking how old you are? Did I miss that at the start?

00:01:08.140 - 00:01:33.440

Yeah, I'm going to be 50 in January. Oh, okay. Yeah. You're looking good on that. Thank you. So you had one older brother. Yeah. Father was a Methodist minister. Yeah, mum was a teacher, primary school teacher. Okay, what did she teach? Just general. Yeah, just kiddy winks. Okay, and church, you went to a Methodist church? Yeah. I don't expect there's a lot of choice in that.

00:01:33.520 - 00:02:06.280

No. No, I was pretty much forced to go to church, but yeah, I kind of went with the territory really. Okay, and would you say you believed in what you were taught at church? Yeah, I think when I was about 14, well no, a bit earlier than that, 12, 13, I had a kind of a religious experience really, which was a bit like the Wesleyan heart strangely warmed. And then, yeah, then I suppose then I

00:02:07.200 - 00:02:35.600

transferred from being just kind of, it being what I was taught to being kind of real for me. Okay. And that kind of fuelled an interest in, yeah, religion, theology. I did RE, O level and A level. I had a teacher who I fell in love with, who I absolutely adored. And she was, she was just great. I mean, so for four years, she arrived at my school

00:02:36.080 - 00:03:01.560

when I was in the, just about to go into my O level year. So she taught me for O level and A level. Okay. And I did, yeah. So then I sort of explored, because then at that point, I was looking for something a bit more interesting kind of church-wise. So I explored a sort of evangelical church in Norwich that had, which is the usual thing really, had more people,

00:03:01.800 - 00:03:28.560

more young people. But I went to, after about a couple of meetings, I just thought, it's weird, there was a kind of prayer meeting that I went to and it's that style of sitting around in groups and saying, talking to God like God's a sort of bezzy mate. God, we do just ask this and we do just ask that and we do just ask the other.

00:03:30.320 - 00:03:49.780

I kind of thought, no, I'm not sure about this. I went because there was some famous person doing the rounds at the time. I can't remember his name, a writer though. And I was just reading quite a lot. So I used to go to the SPCK setting, a bookshop in Norwich and just see what there was and just read stuff because I was just really interested. But I went to that church and thought,

00:03:50.300 - 00:04:11.000

this isn't for me. I think I could feel the kind of authoritarianism and the rigidity even then. And my friend, my teacher, who was sort of becoming a friend, she was only eight years older than me, it was her first teaching job. When I became a boarder, I got much closer to her and I used to go on Sundays to, she had a best friend in Norwich who went to that church.

00:04:12.040 - 00:04:32.620

And she became ill with a kind of unidentified illness. And the theology that came through then was, if your faith isn't strong enough, you're not getting better because your faith isn't strong enough. And at that point I thought, fuck this. This is not. This was sixth form. Yeah, because you were a boarder then. So you've mentioned that you

00:04:32.620 - 00:04:51.740

had a patch on your teacher who was female. When were you aware of having a sexual identity? Yeah, well then I didn't, I mean, I didn't have boyfriends at school really. Um, well I did have one because it was almost kind of compulsory. It's just the thing, especially in the sixth form, you just sort of, it's what you did.

00:04:51.900 - 00:05:06.080

You write poetry and have a boyfriend. Well, it's just that, I mean, you reach the point where you're supposed to walk around the school campus holding hands with a member of the opposite sex, you know, and that's kind of what you do. So this boy asked me out, I didn't realise he'd asked me out, it was a school disco

00:05:06.080 - 00:05:24.580

and he said so. I thought he said, do you want to go outside? So I said, yeah. And then I suddenly realised I'd been asked out and he'd said yes, which meant for a while I had to walk around school holding his hand. I had nothing in common with him, I didn't even know who he was to that point. He was in my boarding house. So I accidentally went out with him and then he chucked

00:05:24.580 - 00:05:47.800

me after about two months anyway, so that was quite a relief. There were, yeah, there were other boys that I actually liked, there was one other boy that I actually liked, but he didn't like me. So I kind of felt, and I had this, and I'd had, there were other women teachers that I'd had crushes on, and I was very aware that was kind of probably not normal, I didn't really tell

00:05:47.800 - 00:06:14.300

anybody about it, but it was incredibly, I mean it was incredibly strong what I felt for her. And so I suppose it occurred to me that I might be a lesbian, but I didn't want to kind of go there in my head. Okay. And when I went to university I just decided that I should try out the boyfriend thing, so I started going out with someone in my year in the November after

00:06:14.300 - 00:06:38.900

starting. This was Cambridge? Yeah, Selwyn College. Selwyn College. So like 100 people in each year. And you were doing theology? Yeah, there were six of us doing theology, which was quite unusual, but this guy was doing engineering. He was the kind of best looking guy in the year, looked like Tom Cruise. We got together and stayed together the whole time I was at university,

00:06:38.980 - 00:07:08.520

I went out with him. So I suppose at that point I'd put the lesbian thing away I suppose. Then I got close to, I went on a youth exchange after my first year, which was to a Methodist thing, scheme they had, which was to, I'd got quite involved in international social justice stuff in Methodist church and other youth stuff, so I had kind of a leadership, national almost

00:07:08.520 - 00:07:36.360

leadership role in that. And I went on this youth exchange to Burma and North Sumatra for seven weeks, and the guy who organised those, a guy called Neil Whitehouse, came out as gay at about that time, so I was very friendly with him and I felt like I had to kind of just learn a lot quickly to kind of find out, because you know that was like 1986. He subsequently became a bit of a

00:07:36.360 - 00:08:03.720

Methodist called celebra because he candidated for the Methodist ministry and was rejected and he went to live in Canada, he's in Canada now. So that started me thinking about sexuality a lot more. When I left, I went to live in Birmingham with friends and worked for the student Christian movement, putting together written resources, and the first thing virtually that I had to do

00:08:03.720 - 00:08:27.880

was to coordinate a group of students, half a dozen students, who wanted to work on a theological resource book that would help people think through why we thought Clause 28 was a bad idea. Yeah. So that was called Just Love and I worked with, they were all I think, lesbian, gay or bisexual. Yeah. And through that whole process of

00:08:29.280 - 00:08:51.940

all the reading I had to do for that, all the conversations I had with those people, I remember thinking to myself, right next time I have feelings for a woman I'm gonna go with it. Okay. So there was a student, she wasn't involved in that, but she was involved in SCM and I got together with her, I was with her for about 18 months. So yeah, so that was the sort of

00:08:51.940 - 00:09:15.060

transition into coming out. And did you identify as lesbian from that point on? Yeah. So you didn't think you were bisexual at any stage? Not at that point, I just identified as lesbian and then I met a woman called Leigh Willis who's also been part of this project, she was 14 years older than me. We worked together on a document with LGCM and Stonewall, which is a response to something

00:09:15.060 - 00:09:46.300

called the Osborne Report, which was a suppressed, slightly liberal report on sexuality that again was around 1990 I think, 1989-1990. So she from Stonewall, she was one of the original 20 Stonewall people. Yeah. She from Stonewall and me from LGCM worked on something called a call to action and I kind of fell in love with her in the process of that. And I was with her for 11, 12 years. Wow.

00:09:47.900 - 00:10:15.160

So yeah, so then it was, it's pretty much my identity really. I mean I have, now I identify as, gender is not really the determining factor. I don't call myself bisexual because I don't, I don't know, I just don't like the terminology. It applies as only two kinds of sexuality. I have my own term which is GND, gender non-determining. I like, I like, yeah, I don't

00:10:15.160 - 00:10:41.980

like bisexual because it implies that it's homosexual. Yeah. And it's not most of the time. Okay, so LGCM at this point, when did you become involved with LGCM? Well then really, I became involved when I was working on the SCM thing. I mean Richard, yeah, that came out in 89. He worked on it, 88, 89. Yeah. When the booklet came out, I was in touch with Richard a lot,

00:10:42.420 - 00:11:10.520

Richard Kirker, because, well he just had, I mean SCM was a friendly student organisation to LGCM, so he was, he was in touch with us on and off and he helped us market that and, and I got, I wasn't, I don't think I was ever on the LGCM committee but because I, it was a, the SCM job was two or three years, so at that point Richard was in the process of setting up

00:11:10.520 - 00:11:41.700

the ISCS, Institute for the Study of Christianity and Sexuality, and I remember writing to him and saying when I leave SCM I want to come and work for that organisation. Yeah. And he and I were both quite excited by that prospect and so I moved, there was no money, so I moved to London and thought I'd give it a year to see whether we could raise the money. Yeah. And then in those

00:11:41.700 - 00:12:07.080

days you could sign on if you had no work and it was a thing called the Young Enterprise Project or something where they, they gave you a grand up front to set up a business and then like 35 quid a week. Okay. So I spent the grand on a year's two travel ticket and then I thought, I think my rent must have been paid for and I had just 35 quid a week to live on and I had the

00:12:07.080 - 00:12:30.540

best year. Yeah. It was great because I was doing a lot of stuff with Richard. I was trying to get the ISCS going, we were working on getting funding, I did lots of media work through, because Richard's kind of got me into all of that. Yeah. I was on the Methodist Sexuality Commission from 88 to 90, so there was stuff connected with that and I was just kind of,

00:12:30.540 - 00:12:58.700

you know, I was passionate about the theme, I was developing my writing, I was doing a lot of workshops and then during that year we got money from Christian Action to employ me for three years. Okay. So that was kind of the next three years of my life really and it was, it was great apart from, yeah so we had, I mean the point of the Institute was to, was to say we're not going

00:12:58.700 - 00:13:20.520

to make any progress on lesbian and gay liberation in the church until we shift the focus onto everybody else, because everybody else has got the problem. So it was about looking at what, at sexuality across the board and trying to get, I mean it's ecumenical obviously, so trying to get Christian people to look at themes which are common to everybody. So we had conferences on

00:13:20.520 - 00:13:48.760

ageing and sexuality, on intimacy, on fidelity, on masculinity, heterosexuality, monogamy, we had loads of pornography, you know, we'd have about three conferences a year and I edited the newsletter and we set up, with Liz Stewart, I set up the journal, Theology and Sexuality Journal, because I, the newsletter was too limited, it wasn't, it just kind of felt we need a forum for

00:13:48.760 - 00:14:20.120

thinking people are doing. So yeah, it was a really good three years, apart from inbuilt in relationship with LGCM and ISCS was this fatal kind of organisational fuck-up, which meant that for some reason LGCM couldn't get charitable status at the time, so they set up ISCS to be the charitable arm, but they also made the remit a lot wider,

00:14:20.940 - 00:14:47.020

so inevitably there came a conflict, where if I was raising money for ISCS, Richard was wanting to keep it all for LGCM, and I was saying, no this is a different organisation, and anyway it just, it all kind of went horribly wrong really, but, and there was a lot of bad feeling, and you know, my relationship with Richard was kind of destroyed somewhere along the line,

00:14:48.280 - 00:15:13.380

more or less, I mean we, I think I went to his 50th birthday party with Elaine, because Elaine had known him from 10-15 years before, so yeah, I mean apart from that, I think we did a lot of really good work, and it was really important, and, but at the end of the three years, I think there was enough money for a bit to employ me for a bit longer part-time, but I did a, I did a

00:15:14.920 - 00:15:45.160

gender studies, women's gender studies MA. Okay, where was that? Where? Warwick, because I lived in Coventry at the time, so I did that just after my, because I, I did the book Found Wanting on women's experience of sexuality, because of ISCS. Okay. Yeah, because it, it soon became clear that LGCM was not really focused on women's

00:15:45.160 - 00:16:13.740

issues at all. Okay. That's an old story, I'm sure you've explored that. Well. A little bit more, we might not have it on tape for a minute. Okay, well I think normatively it was an, a white Anglican male gay organisation, that was its history, it had expanded to include, to become lesbian and gay, because of that, I think a lot of women felt marginalised within it,

00:16:14.760 - 00:16:37.720

I mean Elaine was on the committee, I can't remember how many years before me, but she left for that reason, there was a sort of repeating history of women getting involved and then leaving, there was a women's caucus that fell out. This is Elaine Willis. Willis, okay. Yeah, there was a women's caucus that again at some point

00:16:38.460 - 00:17:01.380

in the mid-90s diverged and set up a separate organisation. It was the old thing about, you know, LGCM is LGCM, if you have a special interest, if you're a Methodist, Catholic, an Evangelical, a woman, you have to pay twice, because you have to pay to be a member of your caucus and pay to be a member of the organisation, and inevitably people said well that's not really

00:17:01.380 - 00:17:28.160

fair, but Richard was insistent, so you know, the caucuses kind of came and went, and the women's caucus split off, it became Ruth's Night Out for a bit, and now there's Left. Yeah, are you involved with Left? I am, have been in the last three or four years, because I co-led a, with Janice Price, who's one of the main collective, I co-led a weekend with her,

00:17:28.520 - 00:17:48.600

and so I go to their annual things, and we just had a 20th anniversary of my book conference in Birmingham at the beginning of November, which was great actually, really good. I wanted to come to that, but it clashed. It clashed with a lot of things. It clashed with a family event that I could not get out of. I think there was about five different conferences

00:17:48.600 - 00:18:07.080

on the 7th of November. Well we had an LGCM board meeting as well. That's right, that was in the morning at the same venue, yeah, they had it in the same place. Yeah, so, and I can't go to the LGCM carol service because it's my mum's 70th anniversary, so I'm like, well I'm not to say I'm a bad mum. No, I am going to the left meeting in January.

00:18:08.720 - 00:18:30.440

Okay, yeah, I'll be going to the one in April. I can't go to the one in January because it clashes with something I've got here. But yeah, so I've kind of got drawn back a bit into that really through Janice. So yeah, so what was that? I was talking about how I found Wanting visiting, wasn't I? Yeah. So yeah, so it felt like there was a lot of women's experience out there,

00:18:30.440 - 00:19:00.220

and it wasn't just lesbian experience either, because I got, we did some, I think pretty pioneering work on sexual abuse as well, because I just ended up with so many women that I found out, including everyone closest to me, survivors, and thinking the church does nothing, and the church had no child protection policies in place at that point at all. So with a woman called Ros

00:19:00.220 - 00:19:30.660

Hunt, who's a priest in Cambridge. She was a social worker, and was a bit, she was kind of, and still is, the expert on survivor issues in the church. She and I got theologians over from the States to speak. We went to the States to one called Marie Fortune, and met with her and talked about kind of things we should do here around that issue as well. So there was a whole

00:19:30.660 - 00:19:51.620

cluster of issues, and a whole load of stories that I felt needed to be out there, and needed to be told, and it was also the point that Liz Stewart's prayer book was banned. Yeah, I interviewed Liz. Okay. I'm doing a doctorate at Winchester, and she's been elected vice-chancellor, so yeah, I heard all about that. I mean, I knew vaguely about it, but hearing it firsthand from her was

00:19:51.620 - 00:20:13.960

fascinating. Yeah, I bet. I mean, I was, she'll remember it a lot better than I will, obviously, but because of that, Richard was kind of organising a boycott of SPCK, and I happened to be in the office when he was meeting with a guy called Steve Cook from Castle, because he was saying, if people don't want to publish with SPCK, I need to set up, you know, I need to set up this job.

00:20:15.540 - 00:20:39.640

Yeah, and they were just setting up this, I can't remember what it's called now, but it was, it wasn't, it wasn't queer then. I think it was gender, so anyway, it was a secular gender politics list, and they signed me up to write on women's critique of Christian sexual ethics, integrating women's experience, and that's, so that's where I found what I'm thinking.

00:20:40.400 - 00:21:09.420

So all those things were kind of happening simultaneously. Yeah. Was this mid-90s? Yeah, the book came out in 95. I had finished working with ISCS then, I think I worked with ISCS from 90 to 94. We launched Theology and Sexuality in 94, Found Wanted came out, just when I start, I just started my course. Yeah. I was doing it part-time, it was so funny, it's like I said at

00:21:09.420 - 00:21:32.440

the conference. I had, I kind of, I just used to wander into Waterstones and look at the feminist stuff, women's studies shells and pick, a bit like I used to do with theology in my dad's study, you know, I'd see which were like the most attractive books and read them. It was only when I went to, did a sort of course that made me see where, which, which strands I'd been reading

00:21:32.440 - 00:21:57.360

and which strands I'd missed out, and the whole thing about feminist methodology and, you know, I just, my methodology essay I did on the use of experience in, you know, and I thought, I didn't theorise any of this before I wrote the book, I'm just quite glad I didn't because I probably never written it. Yeah. It was funny sort of having a book come out and then studying

00:21:57.360 - 00:22:21.220

what I should have studied before I wrote it, but anyway. Yeah. What else have you published? I know you've published a number of books. I wrote a book on well-being in 2002 and then the last one I did was on identity, that's 2009, which included stuff about sexuality and faith identity, but it was meant to be,

00:22:21.740 - 00:22:50.220

it was, I suppose you'd say it's about intersectionality really. I don't think that word was around in 2009, it would be even just, I hadn't come across it anyway. Yeah. So, yeah. Okay. So tell me what's happened since, published Van Monten 95, done a few more publications, what's your role in the diocese here and what other strings do you have?

00:22:52.280 - 00:23:20.200

Well, what happened really, when I finished, I was doing the, I was doing women's studies MA, I was planning another book, I was planning a book on power differences between women and lesbian relationships with Castle, had a contract and everything, but I didn't have any money coming in, once the part-time thing with ISCS had finished.

00:23:20.620 - 00:23:44.120

I worked for a bit with friends in Manchester who had a sort of, a freelance publications consultancy, they were all doing stuff with SCM, it's called Graft Publications. So I was doing stuff with them which earned me little bits and pieces, but in about 96 I just had, I just had to get a job. Yeah. No, yeah, 96, 97.

00:23:48.080 - 00:24:21.260

So, also I had to decide whether I wanted to be, carry on just focusing on gender and sexuality, which I'd done for a while, and I remember having a conversation with someone who was very wise, who said, I don't think you should do that, because you'll just become, you'll be in that box and that will be your career. So I made a conscious decision to expand again and

00:24:23.200 - 00:24:48.360

back into just social justice in general, and not just focus on sexuality. So in a way I put the sexuality stuff to one side, in terms of what I was doing for a job. And the first job that came up was just after the 1997 general election, and it was running Christian Socialist Movement. So I applied for that and got it.

00:24:49.680 - 00:25:13.640

Hated it. Hated it. In what way? Oh well, it was in London. Chris Bryant, who's now an MP, was the chair and he was very good, but it was very much, it was very different from what I was used to, because it was party politics. And I had no desire to be in party politics, and the job was to run the organisation, but it was to run the organisation for people who were

00:25:13.640 - 00:25:42.160

in party politics. And the previous guy, also subsequently became a Labour MP, David Cairns, sadly died very young. So it was just all reactive, all the stuff I hated, all kind of short term, shifting goalposts all the time. You couldn't plan, you couldn't strategise, it all had to be, oh, this issue's very, we need a publication on fox hunting to launch on Boxing

00:25:42.160 - 00:26:11.720

Day. Heck, this is no life. I can't do this. I only survived it because somebody on the committee was a guy called Graham Smith, who's a theologian at Chichester now, but he was the publications person voluntarily for CSA, and he and I plotted another journal. So he and I set up political theology, which is now quite big and international, really to save my sanity, so I could get people

00:26:11.720 - 00:26:37.060

who were actually thinking about things. So I quickly, I quickly, also I was living in Coventry and I was in London three, four days a week, and that wasn't really working. So after a year, the social responsibility job came up at Worcester Diocese, and the bishop was Peter Selby, who had been a trustee of ISCS, and was very supportive,

00:26:37.460 - 00:27:06.400

and was very, probably about the only unambiguously pro-gay bishop we ever had. Um, so I got that job starting in 98, and that was, and that's the job I do here. So since 98, I've been working for the Church of England, promoting social justice in all the different, so I just have a really broad remit, and I love it. Worcester was a small diocese,

00:27:06.500 - 00:27:35.800

and after four years, I got, I got bored. I mean, I wrote Wellbeing while I was there, and it came out just as I was making the move to here. But I'd split up with Elaine, and the next person I, um, got together with was a man. He was actually just taken over SCM Press. He had, when I wrote the Wellbeing book for them, he didn't commission it, but that's how I got to know

00:27:35.800 - 00:28:06.020

him. So, um, he and I got together, married in 2005, divorced in 2010. So that didn't really work. We were together for ten years. Okay. Yeah, because we were together for four or five years before we got married. Okay, that's quite an interesting twist. Yeah, I suppose. I didn't see that coming in your conversation. Yeah, well, it goes back to the bisexual thing,

00:28:06.100 - 00:28:34.920

doesn't it, I guess. I mean, I had, yeah, I just think I've, it was, there was another almost conscious decision back, because I'd got quite into being so radically feminist that I just dismissed all men on principle, and then I, I've always had this in-built hatred of fundamentalism, and there was a part I thought, actually, I'm just being a fundamentalist all over again,

00:28:35.180 - 00:28:58.640

and I should, and because I was, when I was working with Graft, the person I worked most with was a guy called Martin Davis, who was a brilliant writer, really good, and we had a fantastic working relationship, and he was just great. He challenged me a lot on it. So, you're so lesbian, you. So, yeah. Why do you say, as a lesbian feminist, what does it, we didn't

00:28:58.640 - 00:29:21.400

use phrases like, what does that even mean, then, but if we had, that's probably what he would have said. So, I suppose, you know, psychologically, I just thought, come on, you've got to, you've got to flex out a bit. Yeah. So, in that process, just ended up going, I know Alex and I had loads in common. Yeah. We'd done theology together at Cambridge at the same time, we didn't know each

00:29:21.400 - 00:29:48.580

other, and we'd been sort of, in almost, we found out there was so many conferences we'd both been at, and so many we just hadn't ever kind of hooked up. So, when we did, it kind of made sense. Did you have children? No. No, we were, I was 39 when we got married. Kind of, I mean, it wasn't too late, but in effect it was. I kind of, sometimes I wanted

00:29:48.580 - 00:30:09.100

children, sometimes I didn't. So, it wasn't really a very strong basis to actually having. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I'm glad we didn't, because it would have been a nightmare. It would have been more of a nightmare than it actually was, splitting up. Yeah. I mean, not that it's relevant to this, but just out of curiosity, what,

00:30:09.100 - 00:30:36.720

what's your situation now? Because I'm not, I'm not someone who knows everyone in circles. No, I'm not in a coupled relationship at the moment, and I live with friends in a kind of, well, I live with a married couple. The man I have known since 2001, he was in my sort of work circle when I worked in Worcester, because he's a singer, songwriter, Nigerian born.

00:30:40.240 - 00:31:07.780

And I did some, when I did work around racism in Worcester, he helped me with it, and we stayed close. And I, he is a small charity that I chair, that he's the artistic director for, so we have a close working relationship with another hat. Yeah. And he's married to an employment lawyer, and they have three children, 12-year-old twins, and five-year-old boy. Yeah.

00:31:08.100 - 00:31:30.120

So I'm part of the family now, and I have a parental role, and so I've, I've had the opportunity of being a parent, because I've been living with them for five years full-time. Well, what do they call you? What do the kids call you? Auntie. Auntie? I mean, it's, it's an Igbo household, even though Jenny's white, so, yeah, that's eastern Nigeria.

00:31:32.160 - 00:31:52.160

It's, it's very much that culture of extended family. Yeah, yeah. People just get adopted into your household. Oh, I wish I had someone in my house like that. Two teenagers, personally, to say that. Two teenagers and a 10-year-old. There's a curator here who recently had two children, and she said, she'd raised herself

00:31:52.160 - 00:32:14.920

backwards. So you do, so you, you do child care, and so I said, well, yeah, of course, just going, oh god, that sounds fantastic, you know. Yeah, so the reason I was off for two weeks was because sadly Ben's mum died back in July, and they were doing the burial at the end of November. Yeah. And they had the day for a while. So the only way, because he does, he's the primary child

00:32:14.920 - 00:32:40.320

carer, so I just said, well, if I take two weeks off, because he was needing a two-week trip. Yeah. At least we know all the school runs will be covered. Yeah, yeah. And then as it happened, I'll go until the whole time off school. So all my plans were going for long walks every day, completely scuppered. But anyway, at least I've caught up with, well, no, the other thing I was

00:32:40.320 - 00:33:03.040

going to do, because I'm planning, having done that day in November, it was such a good day in terms of people's contributions, and I just sort of thought, I'd really love to do a 20 years on revisit, revisit in the sense of it being driven by people's reflections and experience, women's experience and reflections

00:33:03.040 - 00:33:28.580

of on sexuality and gender, and sort of bring it together with queer theology and queer theory and stuff. So I'm kind of planning that. I've got, I've got a meeting with the publisher tomorrow morning, so fingers crossed. Yeah. Yeah, so I thought, oh shit, I'd better catch up on the queer theory I've missed in the last 20 years. I mean, I did the queer theories and cultural studies

00:33:28.580 - 00:33:53.340

stuff when I did the MA, even though I never finished it. So I felt like, subsequent to fan-wanting, I have, I did, back then in the late 90s, I did a certain amount of theoretical filling in of gaps, but there has been obviously some queer theology since. Yeah, Patrick Chen. Yeah, I wrote that book the last four months. Yeah, and there's a womanist, well there's just

00:33:53.340 - 00:34:18.320

a, it's not brilliant, but at least it's out there. Yeah. The book I could not afford was Gerard Loughlin's book. Yeah, I got that. But that's highly academic, isn't it? I got that from the library, that it was quite hard work, at least of that, yeah. Because Alex, my ex-husband, commissioned that book, I mean, because he's what, he worked for OUP, CUP, SPC, got sacked by all the, SCM, SPCK,

00:34:20.100 - 00:34:41.800

so they were, so I knew that, you know, Gerard had been working on that book for a long time, and Alex was always saying, when are you going to finish that queer theory book, Gerard? So when it came out, it was on our shelves for a while, but you know, ironically, it's no longer on my shelf. But anyway, there's a woman in Manchester who wanted to borrow Carol, because she wants to

00:34:41.800 - 00:35:00.660

see the movie, so I said, okay, you can borrow Carol, if I can borrow Gerard Loughlin. Yeah, actually I watched that last week. Did you? Yeah, obviously because of my namesake. Yeah. My best friend in New York's called Teresa, so it's quite funny. Oh, really? That's right, I don't transcribe the bits that aren't relevant, don't worry. It's not a verbatim

00:35:00.660 - 00:35:24.060

transcription, it's soundbites, because we were never going to get them, because I was doing them verbatim transcriptions, I did Jim Cotter's, Sharon Ferguson's was an hour and 40 minutes, took me absolutely forever. But yeah, no, the film, yeah, it was very true to the book, which I was glad about, but I did find Cate Blanchett a bit off-putting in it.

00:35:24.520 - 00:35:41.940

It's interesting, because somebody said, I can't imagine her in that role. I think it's Elaine, actually, because I still see Elaine, we're still great mates, so I can't imagine, because I think it was Elaine's, because Elaine's middle name's Carol, and I think because she'd had it originally, you know, when it first came out, and I hadn't, and I think I'd borrowed it from her, and I

00:35:42.340 - 00:36:01.900

maybe didn't give it back, because it's an old hardback. I mean, it is called Carol, it's not called A Taste of Salt. Price of Salt. Price of Salt, is that what it is? Yeah, yeah. So anyway, so I lent that to Michaela, and she's sending me Gerard, but I wasn't holding out much hope that it, I just thought I'd better look at it. I looked on Amazon, it was second-hand,

00:36:01.980 - 00:36:30.380

£35, and I'm not paying that. I think all books are about the same now as well. Yeah. Yeah. Going back to the church, I am post-church, I would say. Yeah. I've had quite bad experiences myself in the Church of England, I can't even sit in the service now. I wonder what you, what are the limitations imposed on your work by the Church of England? What things are, can you not,

00:36:30.620 - 00:36:55.260

what places can you not go to, metaphorically? Yeah, that's an interesting question. I was post-church, and particularly when I was with Elaine, because she'd had really traumatic experiences, and never really worked out what to do with her spirituality, really. I was sort of in that place. Once I'd done the Sexuality Commission, and I'd,

00:36:56.320 - 00:37:23.640

I sort of dropped out of Methodism and dropped into nothing, and for years I didn't go near a church. But I still had the interest, the theological interest. Yeah. I didn't really know what my faith identity was. I just couldn't work it out. I knew it was problematic, because I used to get very, how long was this phobia? If I had to be in a worship service, I'd just get completely,

00:37:25.040 - 00:37:42.820

just have really weird emotional reactions to things, that I couldn't, so I'd just avoid them. So if I went on conferences and there was a worship slot, I would always miss it. And I was still going, so I was doing training, I was doing all sorts of things where there was quite often worship slots. And I would just hate, I would dread the fact that I would be kind of cornered

00:37:42.820 - 00:38:05.160

and have to sit through something. Yeah, I always went to the toilet when they did the tour. Just random people hugging you. So I kind of knew it was problematic, but I was also, I also quite got into the Sea of Faith network, which is, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, well, so there's Don Cupid, who is what's

00:38:05.160 - 00:38:26.880

known as a non-realist, so his argument, and I studied under him in Cambridge, and I found his thinking really exciting. It's just that whole notion that God is a human creation, you know. It doesn't mean God has no meaning, but there's no objective God outside. And that kind of went with post-modern theory, and it kind of fitted with, so I was quite involved in, it's the network,

00:38:27.020 - 00:38:54.540

it's called Sea of Faith, because there was a TV programme in the 80s. He was quite famous, because of this TV programme series. So when I went to Cambridge, and he was the kind of first theologian I met, it's kind of, oh my God, it's Don Cupid. So I read all his books. He was my supervisor for philosophy, religion, papers, and I just found it a really fascinating perspective.

00:38:56.420 - 00:39:19.500

And I always stayed with that. So all the time I worked for SCM, my boss, Tim, used to make fun of me, saying, oh, she doesn't believe any of this stuff. She's a non-realist. But then I kind of found it a bit bankrupt after a while. I thought, well, you know, what about transcendence, and what about, you know. And actually, interestingly, Don Cupid got back into that towards, he's still

00:39:19.500 - 00:39:48.340

alive, but his books kind of move much more. So I guess I moved much more towards a sort of mystical kind of contemplative, but not fitting any institutional workings at all. It's just my own private, personal stuff. But then, you know, I was working for, suddenly I was working for the Church of England, still holding those views and perspectives, but having to use a different

00:39:48.340 - 00:40:11.060

language. And it was fine, but then I wanted to explore the whole thing in a book, because I feel like if I want to work out what I feel, think about something I have to write, I have to write about it. So I was going to do a whole book on faith identity and just explore, because at the end of Found Wanting, I have this thing about, I'm a lesbian of Christian heritage. And if somebody

00:40:11.060 - 00:40:32.660

says, should I stay or should I go? You say, well, it's a non-question, because it's a setup, because you're responding to something that you've had no power in setting up. And you're asked to define yourself by, so it was just problematising the whole thing about what Christianity actually is, before you define whether or not you are one, you know, it was just that.

00:40:35.520 - 00:41:04.480

And I thought, I can't write this book unless I actually deal with my own stuff. And for eight years, probably, I had this plan to write about it for a year, I can't remember how many years, but certainly I worked in Worcester for four years. And I knew it had to be somebody who, because I tried, you know, friendly faith leaders, you know, bishop here that I was friendly with.

00:41:04.900 - 00:41:33.520

But it just didn't work, because they're too kind of, you get to a point in the conversation, and you think you're not taking this, you know, you're not getting it. So I found this guy by accident, because I was looking for an alternative career at one time, I thought maybe I'll be a therapist. So I ended up just, and I wanted to live in Norfolk, so

00:41:34.000 - 00:42:05.280

I kind of found this guy in Norwich, called Brian Thorne. And when I, because he was the head of person-centred therapy at UEA, and then it transpired that he was kind of leading theological lay kind of Anglican person. So I got a hold of his books and read them, and I wrote to him and said, and sent him well-being, and said, I'd quite like to meet you. So he phoned me like,

00:42:05.280 - 00:42:30.760

as I discovered he always does, like on receipt of the communication. And I had lunch with him, and that was like 10 years ago, so he's been my sort of spiritual accompanist stroke therapist ever since. So that's really helped me to just disentangle the emotional stuff, and the rejection stuff, and what I feel like, who I feel I am, what,

00:42:32.160 - 00:42:57.840

and the fact that I love God, but I have never fitted in with, even though I've been working for the Church of England, I suppose I value my Methodist heritage. I've never been, I've never been Anglican. I like the non-conformity that was brought up with, and I would, now I go to church sometimes with the kids, and I go to the Methodist church in Morgan. Yeah. But I still find church

00:42:57.840 - 00:43:25.900

services pretty uninspiring, and not a necessary part of my life. Yeah. But I'm, and I still, I suppose I call myself a Christian again, but with all of those provisos of what the hell does it mean anyway. Yeah, it's becoming disreputable almost as an identity, if you say it to people, those assumptions about views, which is sort of the problem I have. I was like, yeah, you know,

00:43:27.240 - 00:43:54.260

I'm a lesbian feminist theologian or whatever, and with me it's, I'm a lesbian guardian reading Christian, and I'm like, why am I doing this? But it's all about that, yeah. Yeah. So in terms of just going back to the question of what are the restrictions in terms of my job, I haven't, I think there's one occasion in this job when I have, see in Worcester, Bishop, and Peter Selby

00:43:54.260 - 00:44:14.820

was just, I think my first meeting was him calling together the gay clergy in the diocese, because it was straight after Lambeth Conference 98, and apologising to them and saying he'd been there, it felt like the Nuremberg rallies, he was there to support them, whatever he could do, they should let him know, and I'm kind of, whoa. I mean, he was amazing, and he still is amazing.

00:44:17.840 - 00:44:39.180

Yeah, here, there's nothing like that, there's not, I've not, in all the time, I've been here 12 years now, I've organised one event that's headed into sexuality, and that was a pastoral care event after Geoffrey John was booted out of Bishop of Reading, because that brought the whole thing back up. At that time I wrote a couple of articles, and I didn't think twice about writing

00:44:39.180 - 00:45:04.480

articles. I wrote one for The Guardian, reflecting on what had changed in 10 years, and it had, it was about post-colonialism and, you know, the international scene, and then I wrote a longer version of that for Crucible, which was the sort of national social justice Anglican journal, I don't know whether it still exists, and one of the bishops here talked to my boss and said,

00:45:04.480 - 00:45:32.260

why did Alison write that? And she said, oh, Bishop Colin's a bit concerned, and I just said, well, it's done. I don't know, why shouldn't I? Because to my mind, in my head, I found wanting is a part of, okay, so I was with Alex when I got this job, I wasn't married, and I was thinking, oh, for once, I won't have to say, and by the way, I'm in a lesbian relationship, I hope that's not

00:45:32.260 - 00:45:55.840

a problem, you know, or what are you going to do to support me with the risk that I wouldn't get the job? In fact, all that happened was they were concerned that I wasn't married. Oh, you mentioned your partner, why aren't you married, in effect? Well, because we're not. Oh, okay, then. I never thought, I never thought that would be an issue.

00:45:57.240 - 00:46:19.980

So I still, I would be aware, because of how things are in this diocese, that, and I did organise, the only other thing I've done was I had to organise back in September, this sort of half-day thing at the cathedral, to replicate something that had been done in Guildford, in the context of the shared conversations. It's not kind of when I would ever have organised

00:46:19.980 - 00:46:45.260

myself, but I was asked to do it, so I pretty much had to do it. I never would have a morning where people have no opportunity to talk to each other, where you've got three lectures, one on history, one pro-gay bible, one anti-gay bible, you know, it's just, no, not the way I do things, but. So, yeah, and all of that, all of that shared conversation stuff,

00:46:45.260 - 00:47:11.640

I've just kept totally away from, because I, I feel like, back in 1990, I was heading up an organisation for which the main philosophy was, you can only have constructive conversation about sexuality if you start from a position of saying everybody's sexuality is valid and equal. If you don't start there, it's not, it's not fair. The power dynamic is not fair, and you're not going

00:47:11.640 - 00:47:37.100

to get a good conversation, so the shared conversations don't start there. They problematise only one kind of sexuality, and we all know which one that is, and they put the spotlight on gay people and then they wonder why it's a damaging, a damaging process, so, you know, there's no way I'm going anywhere near any of that. What do you see happening to the Church of England,

00:47:37.100 - 00:48:08.100

in terms of, to me, it seems there cannot be a middle ground for much longer. Yeah, I think, I mean, the interesting thing about that event I've just mentioned is that if that had been 20 years ago, the feeling in the room would not have, I mean, it felt to me like the anti-gay bloke, I'll give you a shorthand, was not, I don't think,

00:48:08.200 - 00:48:32.340

I didn't sense anyone in the room was sympathetic to him, and this was just about, it was 70 or 80 middle-of-the-road Anglicans. What's the age demograph of those people? 55 plus. Okay, that's interesting. There was some younger, there was one youth worker who was saying, why do none of these people listen to young people on this?

00:48:33.460 - 00:49:03.080

Where's young people's experience? It was a written question, she wrote her question, but it wasn't asked, obviously. So, I just think, as Linda Woodhead says, people's perceptions have changed, their opinions have changed, they've lived, the Church has stopped, it just stopped about, it stopped change institutionally, didn't it, in about 1992, three?

00:49:04.580 - 00:49:21.180

Just put his fingers, decided to put his fingers over his ears and go, eh, I'm listening, and then gay marriage comes in and says, shit, what are we going to do now? With the civil partnership kind of question in the middle, but they got a bit confused because at one point that's what they said they wanted, and then when they came in and said, oh no,

00:49:21.180 - 00:49:48.580

we didn't really mean that, and now it's all caught up in what's the definition of marriage, but that's a kind of side show, really. That's just the way it's portrayed. So, I think at some point the institution will have to catch up with reality, and I don't know how that's going to happen because it's dug itself into so many holes,

00:49:49.380 - 00:50:15.660

like the triple bar on doing gay weddings in Church. Obviously this is an Anglican-dominated perspective, because that's what I'm most familiar with, but I'm optimistic in the sense that I do think people have moved on. You can't live in a culture where everything's changed, and therefore you know more people,

00:50:15.660 - 00:50:40.780

and you're familiar with more people. It's the same on the transgender stuff, because that was nowhere, really. It was just emerging. I remember publishing one article by a female-to-male transsexual, as he called himself then, and one article on pastoral questions around a minister who was dealing with someone who was a cross-dresser

00:50:41.420 - 00:51:04.020

in a congregation, but it was hardly ever spoken about at that point, and now you feel like every other person you meet is transgender. Well, it's also a staple diet on Channel 4 and Channel 5 every night, my transgender rabbit. The interesting thing for me is the bee's still missing nearly the whole time,

00:51:05.940 - 00:51:20.760

which is my kind of mission thing, really. Well, I couldn't believe it. I can't remember which report it was. It was one of those big, thick ones. It was some issues or some more issues. The original some issues.

00:51:20.880 - 00:51:39.260

But it had that line. The only mention of bisexuality was bisexuality, by definition, is wrong, because it means having a relationship with a man and a woman at the same time. Yes, I know. I wish I had the energy. The kids would have let it happen. How could you just not even know that's not what the word means?

00:51:39.340 - 00:52:08.200

It's also sort out your personality disorder. Yeah, there's 17 pages on homosexuality in that document, and 10 lines, one word on bisexuality. It's that complete obsession which remains, and that's what's behind. The marriage has got to mean one man and one woman. It's about gender polarity. What's the word? Binary.

00:52:08.600 - 00:52:39.260

This strict gender binary, which is what I wrote back in 95 about complementarity. And I think we all concluded that the rest of society's kind of gone on with there being a spectrum of gender and a spectrum of sexuality and change and fluidity and all of that. That's kind of, oh, it seems like it's new news, even if it's not to real people in real churches.

00:52:41.140 - 00:53:01.680

I mean, there was a woman at that conference, and this is where I catch myself. I had two conferences in a week. One was on death, befriending death, and the other one was this one on sexuality. And there was a woman who was on both and came on both, and she was the first person to arrive to the sexuality one. And so I supposed a stereotype.

00:53:02.120 - 00:53:29.260

She's a kind of mumsy-looking older woman, very lovely, obviously with a pastoral care role in her congregation. And she was chatting to the historian, Scott, before anyone else arrived. And then she said to me, well, yeah, because my husband's transgender. And I said, oh, my God. And then I thought, why should I be surprised that somebody who looks like her would

00:53:29.260 - 00:53:55.260

have a transgender husband? And because she was just saying, you know, this means that the new legislation means that we don't have to get divorced. We can stay married because we would have had to get divorced when he transitioned. And you think, yeah, that's just an average applicant in an average church and diocese who comes on my pastoral care courses. It's awesome.

00:53:56.640 - 00:54:26.960

Oh, we had Rachel Mann to speak at a conference on loneliness, and someone I know who's on one of my committees, lovely woman, background in social work, a newish priest. And she said to Rachel, because my son's transgender. Wow. So it's emerging as common and not a big deal, as 20 years ago, lesbian and gay stuff did. And that's got to have an impact.

00:54:27.520 - 00:54:52.500

At some point, the leadership has to bow to reality, I think. Before everyone dies off. Everyone being who? You mean before the church dies off? The elderly congregations. Well, that's that's fine. I'll wrap up because I know you've gotten the point then. And that's

00:54:52.500 - 00:54:58.280

fantastic. Thank you very much. Okay. Do you want me to give you any more tabs? All right, wade through.