00:00:00.000 - 00:00:31.320

coming out project. So Colin, can you tell me a little bit about your growing up as a young gay man and I m particularly interested about the impact of the church on your experience, sense of self. I was born, so I was born just as the war was finishing, I was conceived during the war, em, lived in a rising, lower middle class family I suppose, in a terraced house in, on the grid in

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Wimbledon Park. Em, my parents had been married in church and had been involved in church when they were younger but weren t actually going to church, er, when I was, when I arrived on the scene. But I was sent to Sunday, to kindergarten Sunday school when I was three years old and I remember being taken by some woman at the bottom of the road to kindergarten and then moved up to

00:00:54.040 - 00:01:22.120

real Sunday school when I was five in the church and moved up through the classes and I was a good boy and I was one of those really yucky people who wanted his stamp book full at the end of the year and it pretty much I think always was. Yeah. Em, and we were boys from one side, girls on the other. The senior girls class was taught er, in the lady chapel and this was a big Edwardian bottle

00:01:22.120 - 00:01:49.080

green glass church and I always perceived, saw that was a kind of a magical taboo place and I sort of remember thinking that maybe God or somebody lived under the altar because that was the only kind of hidden place that I couldn t quite see what happened there. But em, so I had quite a magical view of God. And when I was twelve, eleven, there was a new incumbent, Peter Hand,

00:01:49.140 - 00:02:21.060

had arrived, who initiated for my age group, er, a class in the other church hall. So I was with him for a year. Er, and he, as I later discovered, was gay but believed that it was sinful and absolutely to be suppressed. Right. Em, and my mother was quite neurotic, depressed, had had a breakdown when my, she was pregnant with my brother when I was three and a half, er, was

00:02:21.580 - 00:02:45.800

hospitalised for six months before he was born. I remember collecting my brother from hospital with my father and she was then returned to the psychiatric hospital for another six months. So she was out of my life for a year. Right. So I can, looking back now, I can see that there were quite searing, er, things going on in the family and in my life that I effectively erased from my

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memory. I don t remember much of what I was like before the age of five. Right. We didn t go on holiday, my mother was agoraphobic, she didn t, you know, she felt very unsafe going on public transport, didn t go on public transport. So it was quite a circumscribed world and church was a big part of it therefore. Er, my grandfather went to church, my grandmother died when I was twelve.

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I was confirmed when I was twelve and became a server and became Peterhans Saturday morning mass 7.30 mass server. Right. In the, in the aforementioned Lady Chapel. Yeah. And it was a compressed space, two steps, and there I was at the beginning saying the preparation and kneeling right next to him and absolutely terrified that I might make a mistake and, you know,

00:03:35.820 - 00:04:00.680

not get every move right. So this is mid-fifties kind of. That was fifty-seven. So it s sort of Lady Bird but religion almost. Yeah, absolutely. Right. Yeah. And, um, and, okay, he announced the following year that he was leaving. Okay. And he wasn t just leaving to go to another parish in the UK, he was leaving to go to Thursday Island in the Torres Straits, northern Australia.

00:04:01.160 - 00:04:30.460

Yeah. It s a long way to go. Absolute, in, absolute isolation, yeah, to run a, a, a training college for lay people. A church in England, an Anglican training college. And the night before he left, he, third, Friday evening, he asked Miss Gates, the parish worker, and me to the Vicarage to give us mementos. Oh. Me as a thirteen-year-old. Right. Yeah. And, um, and he gave me a crucifix,

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which I still got, and his collection of railway tickets because he knew I was crazy on trains. And I don t know what he gave her but, I mean, you know, it, look, looking back now, it seemed an extraordinary thing. Yeah. That he would have invited me out of the whole congregation along with her, yeah, on the night before he was about to leave. And then on the Saturday morning,

00:04:49.120 - 00:05:14.000

I went and served him for the last time. And I was overwhelmed with emotion. I remember walking home and just pouring tears all the way. I, I don t think I understood my feelings back then, but I was clearly, absolutely devastated at the loss of this man. Right. Who had visited home quite a lot. He was musi, musical. He played duets with my mother and brother. Uh, he was

00:05:14.000 - 00:05:41.100

quite wickedly naughty. He had, you know, eye, sparkling eyes that just communicated a lot. He was fearless. He preached. Yeah. Were you in love? Not at all. No. Well, no, I wasn t. No, I think I knew that I had met somebody in him who was incredibly healthy. Ah. And profound. Okay. And safe. Yes. Yeah. And had qualities about him that I was meeting in nobody else in my life.

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Okay. And it s only as I say that now that I guess in, therefore, in an unconscious way, he was also profoundly significant in the end in my becoming a priest. Yes. Yeah. I don t think I d kind of actually made that link until now. Right. So, so that, so there was he. He was followed by a guy who was fat and single and slobbish and, um, had a fat, slobbish housekeeper

00:06:06.300 - 00:06:25.920

and they used to kick the dog downstairs and things like that. And, and he was apoplectically angry sometimes in the city. And if you felt the congregation weren t responding, he would storm down and kind of scream hymns at the top of his voice at us. And yeah. So not a healthy. Not a good model. No, not a healthy role model. Um, and then a curate arrived and I was 16,

00:06:25.920 - 00:06:52.120

fresh from Cambridge, but also fresh from induction in the church movement and yeah, radical thinking about, yeah, liturgy and so on. So I got an early and quite detailed introduction to the book, the change that was just beginning in the church that led towards series one and two and three and all of that. And I remember us having an experimental Eucharist at the front of

00:06:52.120 - 00:07:15.680

the nave on one evening occasion. With a nave altar. With a nave altar and then across the, you know, facing the people. Right. Yeah. So there were, I was also, thanks to that church, introduced early on. Yeah. Right. Right. So then to fit into that, my sexuality. Yeah. Right. Cause these things run in parallel and they re easier to tell, yeah,

00:07:17.200 - 00:07:50.840

not, well, some dovetailing is needed. So in my last year at primary school, I was 11, nearly 12, a boy arrived called Ian Seton, who was blonde and winnowy from another school. I can t think where he came from. And I was completely infatuated with him. I couldn t have identified what it was, but I was besotted, emotionally, absolutely hooked on him. Um, and we then went to separate

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secondary schools over at Durain s Park. He went to Tiffin s and my birthday was in September and I wanted him to come to my birthday party. I don t know how I knew where he lived because he lived way up at the top of Wimbledon Hill. But I got my father and I was a very shy person. I got my father to drive me up to his house, knocked at the door and invited him to my birthday party and he

00:08:10.820 - 00:08:36.020

brought me a dinky toy that disappointed me. And, and we sat and played with my model railway and he went off home and I never ever saw him again in my life. Oh. But I knew as I began to process that experience that I, well in fact that as, yeah, in, in the experience, that I fancied guys in the same way as other guys were beginning to fancy girls and that that was going to be with

00:08:36.020 - 00:08:56.300

me forever. And you were conscious of that even. Absolutely, yeah. I remember thinking it, yeah, this is who I am. And in the 1950s where there were no gay role models. No, apart from the camp ones on television. So what must, what was that about? Maybe that was a bit later. I think that s probably later. Oh, well, Frankie Howard was around. Oh, that s true. You know,

00:08:56.340 - 00:09:19.760

he was doing stuff in Educating Archie and. But, but was Frankie Howard gay or was he just traditional English camp? I think it s, I don t know at what age, but somewhere I knew that this was related to me and that I didn t like it. I did not want to be a. A tramp. Okay. Yeah. Limp-wristed person like them. But indeed, but they were the only. Yeah. Role models,

00:09:19.960 - 00:09:44.540

identifiable people there were. Except then of course going back to church a bit later, um, I wasn t, I wasn t confirmed by him, but Mervyn Stockwood must have arrived pretty soon after. Oh yes, the famous Mervyn Stockwood. And, and I knew perfectly well, fairly early on that Mervyn was gay. No idea how that permeated into my knowledge, but it did. And by the time I was in

00:09:44.540 - 00:10:05.280

my mid to late teens, I knew perfectly well that Southwick was a diocese in which there were many gay clergy. Okay. And that it was clearly perfectly okay for gay people to be part of the church. But it was never talked about. And I think, you know, there must have been an awareness that one of the scout leaders was probably gay. And I certainly fancied choir boys of my age and,

00:10:05.780 - 00:10:32.500

you know, there was, and, and there was quite a lot of, uh, playing around at school. So that I wasn t, it wasn t that I didn t have, there wasn t any sexual activity. But there was never for me any serious sexual activity until I was way older. Right. Into my thirties. Okay. Yeah. Um, so, and I was quite diffident. And yet, clearly I ve got this other side of me, which is still

00:10:32.500 - 00:10:55.300

very present, um, that can be quite naughty and flirtatious and, you know, knows how to use my personality to help my way through life. So that I was, I was elected to the PCC when I was eighteen. Okay. Um, was quite influential there. There was a proposal to build a new church hall. I didn t like the architect they had chosen, he was a friend of my family. So I went round and

00:10:55.300 - 00:11:23.040

individually lobbied all PCC members and got a, I defeated what the vicar really wanted. Gosh. You know. Yeah. So, so I learnt, in a way, politicking. Okay. It was totally intuitive. Right. Yeah. Um, and, but I was acutely depressed. Something had happened when I was sixteen, seventeen, that had got me very withdrawn and depressed. And I was in the sixth form of school,

00:11:23.040 - 00:11:47.540

I couldn t see the point of taking it seriously and studying. So I failed all my A-Levels first time around. Okay. Uh, was then sent to Kingston College of Further Education. And I wanted to be an architect. I was, I was keen on buildings. I had already applied to Kingston Poly for a place and had got a place. Right. So, and that was held over for me. So I went to, uh, KCFE, uh,

00:11:48.380 - 00:12:10.360

retook three subjects and passed one. Passed geography. Uh, and then, uh, due to a friend who was the City Librarian in Gloucester, he found me a place with a firm of architects in Stroud. So I went and lived in Gloucester and worked for a year with the architects in Stroud and was going to retake two subjects. So in the end, I started doing art and got A-Level art.

00:12:11.020 - 00:12:32.100

Right. And that was enough to get me into Kingston. So you went from school and Kingston, uh, from Gloucester to Kingston to study architecture. Yes. You didn't go into ministry. No, I went to study architecture. Okay. And I think in part because it was a, it's a seven-year course and it kicked having to grow into adulthood and to take getting a job and, you know, life

00:12:32.640 - 00:12:59.040

into the long grass for a long period. Yeah. Okay. For a long time. But I also enjoyed architecture and of course, you know, all my fees were paid. Um, it was a much less intensive course than it is nowadays. Uh, much more on the art side rather than on the mechanics of buildings side. In the first week we were divided into groups of five. So there was me and a woman,

00:12:59.160 - 00:13:27.160

my age and three other guys. It wasn't until 15 years later that I discovered that two of the other guys were gay. Goodness. And we worked together closely all through that first year. And then for the following two years, none of us ever twigged that the others were gay, ever talked about it. I know. So I think that's a sign of how invisible gay people who were not

00:13:27.160 - 00:13:55.540

of the camp variety were back then. And the impact that had on me was I never ever found other gay people. I was always infatuated with people who were very sexy and physically attractive to me, but in the end were not really gay, but gave a lot of themselves to me. They were really good friendships through my twenties and one in particular. So there was a lot of,

00:13:55.560 - 00:14:17.260

of emotional frustration of, yeah, of not being emotionally, sexually satisfied, um, not meeting somebody with whom I could form that kind of intimate relationship. And it didn't happen until actually my last year at theological college when I was 32. That's when, that's the first year. By today's standard, that's enormously late. Incredibly

00:14:17.260 - 00:14:43.580

late. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't have a conversation openly with somebody about being gay until my took in a lodger when I was 27. Right. And, and we were both in safe enough in circumstances that we could talk about it and, uh, and did and, and became friends and we're still friends actually. And presumably that was also partly because people were aware that being gay was something

00:14:43.580 - 00:15:04.980

dangerous. Yes. And therefore you wouldn't want to reveal and expose yourself to the possibilities of blackmail and misunderstanding and trouble. Yeah. And something had happened to me earlier, which I knew that if I made public, would have a devastating effect on the other person and on me. I knew that I would be in the

00:15:04.980 - 00:15:36.640

public eye and that I would be deeply humiliated. So there were enormous self-preservation reading, self-preservation reasons for keeping my sexuality secret and developing a, it wasn't necessarily a false persona, but a kind of the person I wanted to be seen as and accepted as. Right. Yeah. And in the church in Southwark in the sixties, although there was a well-known

00:15:36.640 - 00:16:00.360

gay subculture. Yeah. Presumably this was entirely under the wire and unspoken. Yes. I just knew it was there. Right. Em, but I don t think I, but I never knew personally anybody. It was a very, my world was still really quite a small world. Right. You know, I lived, still lived in the same house. I don t know, we moved by then up to a slightly bigger house near Wimbledon, but I just

00:16:00.360 - 00:16:31.300

travelled there to, to college and back and home to church. You know, that really was most of my world. So, and how did vocation come out of the process? You said you finished at thirty-two. So I, em, I, I fancied something like crazy in my first three years. Okay. At Kingston Poly. And, em, and he wasn t responding to me and I thought, okay, I ll, I ll, I ll, I ll punish him by, er,

00:16:31.420 - 00:16:57.640

indeed going and, er, training as a priest and leaving. Right. So I got in touch with the DDO, Derek Tasker, who, who was gay. Right. And I think maybe I did know was gay. Yes, when I was twenty-two and I came back from having my first year in, er, in Stroud, em, the parish had contacted the diocesan youth and children s group and they were giving us

00:16:57.640 - 00:17:22.180

help in cre, informing a youth group and I then got involved in diocesan activities. Okay. Em, some schools, em, and began to meet people in the diocese. So I suspect that the children s, youth officer was probably a lesbian. Right. Actually. Er, and I got to meet Derek through them and I got to meet, er, actually I did then, I think of another person, I won t name here, but

00:17:22.180 - 00:17:45.560

who, who was absolutely gay. Right. Absolutely gay. You, you know. Yes. Em, broadcast on radio too sometimes. Right. Still. No. That s it. I m not sure he does anymore. Okay. I think he does a lot of cruises, cruises now. Yeah. Em, so, so I went to see Derek and he, wise man of the years, said, well, my advice to you is to go away, finish your

00:17:45.560 - 00:18:10.940

architectural training, qualify, and then come back and see me and see where we go from there. But it would be very good if you had professional training. Right. Before you enter the church. So I d, I did that. I went away, er, qualified, em, and for the first time, left home properly. At thirty-two. No, at twenty-eight. Twenty-eight. I said twenty-eight. Yeah. I know. Okay. You know,

00:18:10.960 - 00:18:31.660

I d lived away from home for the two years in Gloucester, but actually that was the first time I really abandoned home. I got a job in Basingstoke, er, with a private architect, em, moved down there, found a, a, a, a basement flat right in the centre of Basingstoke, five-minute walk from work. The office was in the, in a wing of the church hall,

00:18:31.860 - 00:18:54.720

right next to the parish church, above the parish office. Em, it was the first year of formation of the team ministry. There was a, an interregnum, the curate was gay, em, and it was a fantastic, buzzy environment. It was wonderful. And it was church like I had never experienced it before, but dreamed of it then and dream of it now, to be honest. Right.

00:18:55.120 - 00:19:18.660

You know, well, it s not so different from here probably, but it, you know, back then. So there were, there were a team of seven, er, all quirky, exotic, creative, intelligent, playful, yep. Right. And they met for a team meeting weekly, er, there was a Eucharist in the middle of the day. I, I went to the Eucharist and I think I actually even began going to the

00:19:18.660 - 00:19:44.840

team meeting. Right. Towards the end of my time there. So, that was a fantastic induction into what church could be like. Right. Yeah. And how free you could be, to be yourself and do your own thing liturgically in terms of parish ministry. Yeah. Em, they, they ran a week, a Saturday event for kids, which they threw in the parish church open, and they invited people

00:19:44.840 - 00:20:09.300

from the television, was it play? One of the television programmes, yeah. So there were, there were visual arts, there was, you know, dra, drama, drawing and painting and stuff, and the whole church building was turned over to it. You know, wow. Em, yes, okay, so I, and the rector who was appointed and then arrived was quite a sober and is still

00:20:09.300 - 00:20:30.480

a great friend. And he must have picked up that something in me had thought about ordination. So halfway through my three years there, he said, look, er, what about it? You know, are you or are you not going to think about being ordained? So I went away and thought about it and I, and I think I knew the answer was going to be yes. And I, you know, and the reason was that the,

00:20:30.720 - 00:20:55.660

and really the reason was, if you can't beat them, join them. Right. I was so frustrated at the impotence of being a layperson and flowing with energy and ideas and in deep involvement, but I knew that in the end, I wasn't going to be able to form the kind of parish and congregation and so on, you know, that I intuited. Yeah, I wanted to. So, em, so I

00:20:55.660 - 00:21:18.940

went and met the bishop and that was okay. And then I went to the MacDarston panel in which I remember some retired colonel asking me, is, where, where, if the, er, if in the, em, the fullness of time, Mr, em, Jack Howard, er, this, this committee should, er, see its way to recommending you for ordination, where would you, er, like to serve your title? And I remember

00:21:18.940 - 00:21:43.040

thinking, what a stupid question and in as nice a way as possible said, well, I haven't a clue actually at the moment. I have no idea. But anyway, so that was fine. And then, and I was recommended for training. Yeah. Oh yeah. I, I went to, er, residential Abham, whatever it was back then, em, wondered whether I was going to be asked about my sexuality, was, you know, it was there,

00:21:43.040 - 00:22:01.780

my consciousness all the way through. Er, I wasn t, em, I think I intuited it was there somehow in the background of questions or whatever, but that actually people really weren t interested in it. The church wasn t interested in whether I was gay or not. And that was your, your feeling at the time. Yeah. So, this is, what, mid-sixties. Yeah,

00:22:01.900 - 00:22:22.000

that would have been, let me think, fifty-five, forty-five, fifty-five, sixty-five, seventy. Okay. Three. Seventy-three. So, early seventies. Yeah. So, people were aware of your sexuality, but they weren t actually interested in it as a, as an issue. Absolutely. Not an issue at all. Not remotely. Yeah. Very deliberately not interested in it. Yeah. Very deliberately not asking

00:22:22.000 - 00:22:49.480

questions. And that would have been my experience in the, er, mid-eighties as well. Gosh. Yeah, when things had begun to change. Yeah. Begun to change. But, yeah. Yeah. So, so having been accepted, I, I must have been seeing the, the Winchester DDO, who I can t remember at all, interestingly, now. But I went back to Derek Tasker. Right. Um, who visited every college

00:22:49.480 - 00:23:08.920

every year. Right. So, I had first-hand information. And he said, um, having run through those that he thought were worth looking at, and I would recommend that you should consider Westcott House as your first choice. And I thought. Okay. Westcott. I m not a Westcott person. You know, I didn t see myself as, yeah, you know, it was a college for the. Teacher bishops. High

00:23:08.920 - 00:23:28.240

flyers and teacher bishops. Absolutely. Er, and I guess I actually was quite flattered that Derek thought that that is where I should go. And he said, you know, so I, I, I think I want you to apply to Westcott and make clear that that s your own, the only college you re going to apply to initially and I will write to Mark Santer and tell him that he ought to. Yeah. Accept you. So I,

00:23:28.800 - 00:23:56.560

I turned up for a, a, an overnight interview process at Westcott. And was just bowled over by it. Emotionally now, I can still kind of remember vividly. One of the best experiences of my life. Um, the guest master, Stephen Peters, um, who was just very slightly older than me, he, he said, there ll be a, an envelope for you on the notice board when you

00:23:56.560 - 00:24:17.320

get into the lodge and put your name on it and instructions and so on and I ll meet you the next, you know, sometime the next day for a coffee or so. And there it was with kind of green writing on it and I flourish and I thought, OK. And, um, and then, yeah, I was hosted by various people who all said, well, you know, Mark Santer, very intimidating and, you know, and he s like

00:24:17.320 - 00:24:37.440

this, you know, real leadership. And then there d be John Arnson who was the chaplain, yeah, who kind of sit under a table and put a cushion on his head and was a bit really wacky and so on. And then there was another guy. He was the early seventies. He was the early seventies. And so I kind of, you know, went into each of them thinking, oh, heck. Each interview was just

00:24:37.440 - 00:25:03.840

wonderful. Yeah. I had a great time with Mark and I thought, gosh, I m not so out of this world as I might have thought I was. Yeah. And was accepted at Westcott, um, and I, for me it was wonderful. Three years? I was supposed to do three but it reduced to two in a term. I was supposed to do, yeah, whatever I was supposed to do, but I academically, I just wasn t committed to it.

00:25:03.880 - 00:25:27.840

OK. Er, and then Mervyn Stockport arrived in my, towards the end of my second year, looking for somebody to replace a curator who just walked out of his parish. OK. Um, so it was agreed that I would do one extra term to mop up the, um, yeah, the pastoral stuff. Um. You wouldn t be allowed to do that now. And was ordained, I know, um, in, in December. Yeah. Um,

00:25:27.980 - 00:25:49.700

and then did a short curacy, or short, yeah, and was then priested in er, in September. Yeah. Gosh. I know. All in, yeah. All in the year. And you said, you said your curacy where? St George s Camberwell. Oh, OK. I know St George s. Oh. Yeah, indeed. I was at the Elephant and Castle, you said. Oh, of course, yes. John s Falls. Oh, of course. Mm. Which is a, it is adjoining,

00:25:49.840 - 00:26:16.380

yes. Yeah. There s nothing in between it, no. Yeah. So, OK, so I arrive at, um, yeah, so we, I don t think there s anything crucial, crucial missed out, so. No, that s right. But, but, the inter, it s interesting that your experience of being a gay person in the church, actually in wider society, is that, it s, it s known and acknowledged, and slightly risky, but there s

00:26:16.380 - 00:26:39.760

nothing, in the way that people, it s focused on in the way that it is these days in the church. Mm. Didn t really exist in the church in the sixties and seventies. Yeah. It wasn t an issue. Yeah. And presumably our society, so, being gay had been decriminalised in sixty-eight, was it sixty-eight? Sixty, sixty-seven. Sixty-seven. Mm. And society s attitudes

00:26:39.760 - 00:27:00.380

were beginning to change. Yeah. Although slowly. I was twenty-two. Twenty-two. So, growing up as a, and maturing as a man at a time when that was all beginning to be flexible. Mm. More fluid in society. And in a church where it wasn t so interested. Yeah. In that as an issue. And more adult about it all. Right. Then, actually. Yeah. And actually there were,

00:27:00.380 - 00:27:22.320

so there, there, there, actually there are two more things that I need to mention. One is, that of course Southwark was the home of South Bank religion. Yes. And Nick Stacey was at Woolwich, John Robinson was Bishop of Woolwich. Um, so, er, and the cathedral had this extraordinary evening programme, Sunday evening programme of events, Sunday nights in Southwark. Yeah. With

00:27:22.320 - 00:27:45.300

all, you know, drama and arts and music and so on going on. So, I was, I absolutely knew that radical theology was healthy and fine and in Southwark terms, orthodox. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I read Honest to God when it was first published. Right. And sort of thought, well, what a relief to, I can believe what I really believe. Right. So, I was always

00:27:45.300 - 00:28:10.920

non-orthodox in terms of, of theology. Yeah. Mm-hm. And, um, yes. And, but what I didn t realise, of course, was the rest of the Church of England wasn t necessarily quite like this. No, so, and all I had was the Diocese of Southwark and Basingstoke team ministry. Right. And where I lived in Matson and Gloucester, which was all, which was also, he was very radical. Yeah. And

00:28:10.920 - 00:28:30.380

was involving the congregation in liturgy back then in the, yeah, late sixties. In a way that it took the Church another ten or twenty years to catch up with really. And was presiding across the table and, and inviting lay people to come and join him at the altar for the Eucharistic prayer and. Okay. Yeah. So. Which still doesn t happen very much even now. No, absolutely not.

00:28:30.460 - 00:28:54.680

No. So, I actually, I learnt a lot from him about how you can actually root what you really believe about the inclusive nature of a ministry. Yeah. In parish life, Sunday by Sunday, and that s always been really important to me. So, after you d done your curacy, where did you go? So, hang on. So, back to, back to Westcott. Right. Was the most gay-friendly place I had ever

00:28:54.680 - 00:29:16.900

encountered in my life. Oh, you said you had fallen in love with somebody, didn t you? Yeah, I did, yeah, yeah. But, you know, it, it was open, adult, safe, easy. It wasn t a big issue that there were lots of gay people in training. Yeah. People were just getting on with being who they were. And Mark and the other staff really helped with that. And at the end of my second,

00:29:17.080 - 00:29:40.380

first year then, staff was joined by Rowan Williams, who also contributed to this absolute enormity of healthy environment. So, Westcott was ordaining or sending to be ordained gay people who had been formed in that mature, healthy culture. And I was very lucky because I was, went back to Southwark. Right. Yeah. To the same culture. So, and in my, in, um,

00:29:40.640 - 00:30:04.360

Campbell Deanery then, there were probably fifteen people of my age or less. Right. We met together once a month on a Friday evening for a meal. So, there was this fantastic support network. I was going to say that doesn t exist now. Now, no. No. No, it doesn t. Well, there were more clergy around, of course, but also, yeah, there were, it, it, it, it was,

00:30:04.440 - 00:30:25.900

it was such a, you know, as I look back at it now, I had such good experiences. Sounds like a golden age. Yeah, really nourishing and nurturing. Right. Whereas I remember PTO in the chapter, the old chapter house at Southwark, and with this sort of, you would probably have been there if you d been in my period. Yeah. Uh, this black clad, you know, tightly laced up brigade sitting

00:30:25.900 - 00:30:43.060

in the back, nudging and giggling amongst themselves because half of them were closeted gays. Yeah. And it just felt so incredibly unhealthy. Well, that still existed in Southwark when I was there in the, in the early nineties. Did it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that certainly existed when I got there in the early nineties. Yeah. So, that was, but those were the kind of

00:30:43.060 - 00:31:03.360

two sets, in a way, in the church, weren t they then. Yeah. That, you know, either you were up, up, up tight and, and I didn t, there were obviously evangelicals, but I didn t know about them then. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so then, um, and Peter Selby, I don t know when did he come, no, maybe after Keith Sutton. So, Keith Sutton was the Bishop of Kingston then. Right. And he

00:31:03.360 - 00:31:30.040

had been a principal of Ridley, Ridley when I was at Westcott. Right. So, I d got to know Keith well before I arrived in Southwark. And Keith was looking to fill a vacancy at St Faiths Wandsworth. Oh, yeah. Which was, oh yes. Yeah. You, you would know my predecessor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It was a story about him anyway. Yeah. So, um, oops, um, because it was potentially

00:31:30.040 - 00:31:50.880

in the school rebuilding programme. Okay. There was a, an awful Victorian school with open air toilets. Uh, the church had been demolished 10 years previously. Um, they were worshipping in the school hall. Mm-hmm. And, uh, and, well, I looked at it and I went. I can t quite think why I did. Right. I, I d always had dreams as an architect. Of building your own church. Yeah.

00:31:50.980 - 00:32:10.680

Well, no, well, no, or of, of arriving, you know, to this glorious service. Right. Yeah, of, yeah. Yeah. What were they called? Induct, inductions? Yeah. Well, licensing. Licensing. Yeah. You know, in this wonderful church with a fantastic organ. My brother s an organist, you know. Yeah. Right. Canberra, they were worshipping in the school hall. Right. St. Faiths, they were worshipping

00:32:10.680 - 00:32:34.220

in the school hall. I ve, I ve never, I never had it. Right. But, it did mean that, um, three years in, they got put into this school building programme. Okay. Uh, and I d inherited a design and architecture that I didn t like. Uh, and went and talked to the diocese and they agreed that we could re-interview and, you know, look for potentially a new architect. And it was a

00:32:34.220 - 00:32:55.320

complex thing because it was a school, church, adult education institute and youth club. So, they all had separate architects. Right. Plus the Ilia. Yeah. Sorry, they were, they were, they were separate client bodies, plus Ilia, plus it was both the diocesan board of education, plus the diocese itself in terms of church buildings. Yeah. So, there were seven different.

00:32:55.320 - 00:33:23.180

Oh, and the PCC, yeah, seven different client bodies. Right. And I got, we invited four architects to come and effectively audition, to come and present to the PCC their work, which was rare. I mean, I think it still could be quite rare actually that clients bother to do that. Yeah. So, they could see the quality of the work that was being offered and they unanimously

00:33:23.180 - 00:33:46.400

chose a firm that I knew well that was really well known for its radical modern church buildings, Moira and Murray. Right. And the diocesan board of education didn't like them because they'd never built a big school. They'd done add-on classrooms and so on. So, for a year this war ensued. Oh, yeah. In which the PCC under, you know, they were absolutely with me. They were not going to

00:33:46.400 - 00:34:08.420

be fobbed off with somebody crap. Right. And in the end, we were offered somebody who was deemed to be neutral who turned out to be brilliant actually. Okay. And so, yeah, the design and I had a lot of input into the design of the church. I'd sat down and worked out what kind of budget we'd got because initially it was just a kind of a hole off the side of the school hall. Right. And

00:34:08.420 - 00:34:30.840

we actually built pretty much a self-contained church in the end. Right. Kept budget back out of sight of the diocese and commissioned a pipe organ. Okay. Stained glass, er, designed furniture, you know, all the church. All fitted in. Yeah, all fitted, actually the whole, it was a beautiful space. Right. Um, and one of the best things,

00:34:30.880 - 00:34:55.180

yeah, most satisfying things I've ever done. Right. Really. Um, and then I, having completed it because they then often want to move you on. Yes. And I wanted to enjoy it. I didn't want to be moved on. So, I resisted. Right. Now, the story gets a bit complicated at this point and I can't think what year it was, the building was finished. But anyway, I was there and we did

00:34:55.180 - 00:35:23.680

things that I, I find quite unusual for me. Right. In fact, we, we looked around for what else we could do that would enhance the life of the congregation and that we were going to enjoy doing. And it was a, another dream goal in a way. And it was, the church was St. Faith's. So, we did a bit of research, I guess, and discovered that St. Faith was in Aquitaine

00:35:23.680 - 00:35:51.200

in southern France. Yeah. And that her reliquary and remains were still held in Conk in a fantastic Romanesque church there that was on the Compostela pilgrimage route. Okay. With, still with a pilgrimage hostel next to it. So, we organised a week's pilgrimage for thirty of us. Half black, half white. The youngest was a baby girl, black girl, baby girl of eighteen months. The oldest

00:35:51.200 - 00:36:15.420

was a white woman of eighty-three who had never been abroad in her life before. So common in South London at the time. Yeah. Really was. Yeah. Absolutely. So, we drove in two cars and a minibus and it was just an extraordinary time. It was fantastic. I mean, just fantastic. I know, like, aye, gee, it was such a good life back then. Yeah. What the church does nowadays in my experience

00:36:15.420 - 00:36:42.020

is just so timid and dull. So, we did that and then they wanted more. So, we then, I organised with them three successive parish holidays in this country. Right. Over the following three years. Um, but yeah. It was, yeah, and we had a great time. Went to Wales and Cornwall and yeah. You know. It was, and it was a small con, it was a smallish congregation, sixty or seventy people.

00:36:42.140 - 00:37:11.100

Okay. But I really, really enjoyed my ministry there. So, why did you leave? Okay. So, I'd been in, in counselling and therapy already for quite a long time. Yeah. And had gradually graduated from one kind of therapy to another, to group, to group therapy and then realised that there was, was deep-rooted stuff in me, that I was very disembodied. I was disconnected from my

00:37:11.100 - 00:37:33.900

emotions and that all the stuff I'd done up until then in therapy hadn't actually, kind of, broken through the barrier. So, as many people do, I decided I needed to train as a psychotherapist. It's always the happens. Yeah. It's always the way. It's always the way. And the diocese were then looking, said they wanted, when I left, to make the, the post a half-time post. Okay. And

00:37:34.640 - 00:38:02.280

the gay cha, chaplain of Queen Mary's Hospital, um, was looking for a half-time assistant at that time. So, all of this fitted together and I volunteered myself to go half-time and became half-time chaplain and started the psychotherapy training and persuaded the diocese to give me a grant to do it, er, and initially carried on living in the vicarage. So, I didn't need to

00:38:02.280 - 00:38:26.900

look for anywhere. So, I was doing all of those things at once over a period of two or three years. And Niall, the chaplain, was the, he, he was running the clergy consultation. Okay. At that time. Which is, I'd previously been involved in. Worth explaining, worth explaining what clergy consultation was. Right, so the clergy, yep, the clergy consultation was founded just

00:38:26.900 - 00:38:53.780

a bit after LGCM and was then the Lesbian and Gay Clergy Consultation. Yep. Having been initially the Gay Clergy Consultation before women were ordained. Yeah. Um, which was a, a group of LGBTI clergy in the Church of England who met twice a year for a day in central London and at its maximum it had something like 600 members. Oh, that's huge. It was huge, yeah.

00:38:54.240 - 00:39:21.240

When Malcolm, in Malcolm Johnson's earlier period, yeah, it was huge. They didn't talk on to me. Some, some meetings were often 80 or 90 people. Right. And, and they would invite, yeah, significant people and also then occasionally DDOs, bishops. It was totally confidential. There was a very sort of a secretive induction. Yes. Route into it. Um, so I'd already been,

00:39:21.400 - 00:39:48.720

been to meetings but lapsed, but I went then back with Niall and he's very, on the way up in the, in a car, he announced to me that he was going, he was going to resign or, yeah, at that meeting. And something in me said, I don't know Colin, but I think you might be being called to volunteer yourself for this. Right. And I had never ever been an activist, a campaigner,

00:39:49.860 - 00:40:15.520

open in my life before. But I did volunteer, but nobody else did, so I became the convener of the consultation. Okay. So this is the beginning of the journey. This is the beginning. Okay. And actually then, so that was in parable, it must all be around 1991, 92. I was then. Just after I'd been ordained. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I was all, I, I, I'd been seeing a guy, a black American model

00:40:16.140 - 00:40:47.280

who was just a few years younger than me, who, oh, he was a difficult person, very difficult person, but I was absolutely hooked. Uh, three or four months after he met, he discovered that he was actually positive. Okay. And in 1991 he died. Ah. And I was devastated. So emotionally, I was, I was, yeah, I was, and that same period, it was the first half of 91. I was involved in

00:40:47.280 - 00:41:09.780

the group that was organising in the Diocese of Southwark, a residential conference for the diocese at Cayster. That, okay. Yeah. Jack Spong came and spoke at the conference and out of his presence, a group, including me, decided to create a support network for LGBT people in the diocese. So I would have been in Southwark. I was Southwark 90 to 94. Were you really? Yes.

00:41:10.560 - 00:41:30.960

And were you not at Cayster then? I don't remember it. It probably wasn't very high, as you were, the meeting wasn't that high profile advertised, I suspect. Gosh. Don't remember it at all. How funny. Wow. Isn't it weird? But I have notoriously poor memory, shockingly bad memory. But I think we all went, must have all gone to Southwark. I think we did,

00:41:31.000 - 00:41:50.000

yeah. They must have been there. And you, but you don't remember going? No. You don't remember the Jack Spong? Because they wouldn't, they wouldn't make him the keynote speaker. They put him in a secondary venue and he was really pissed off with it. But of course it was absolutely heaving with people to the, you know, to the point where people are standing at windows to hear him. So I was so

00:41:51.000 - 00:42:10.280

not engaged in sort of that kind of church politics then. Yeah. That I would have had no idea. You would have avoided like plague. Yeah. I would have avoided like plague. I mean I was, I was a buttoned up Anglo-Catholic. Yeah. Gosh, you have come a long way. I've come a very long way. So, so back in the diocese, that group began to meet and I was part of the steering committee.

00:42:11.240 - 00:42:38.340

We were meeting at a vicarage, oh, in Vauxhall. And the guy, I think after the second meeting, he went on a holiday to Australia, to the Great Barrier Reef and was killed in a, er, a surfing. Oh dear. Or an underwater thingy. Accident. Yeah. Which left the group homeless. So I think it was probably then that it, it, it moved its venue to St Faith's, to my church.

00:42:39.120 - 00:43:10.880

So it met at St Faith's, yeah, from then on. And became part of the vision for what became Changing Attitude. So that was ninety-one. Nineteen ninety-five, um, I was meeting and reaching quite a lot with my spiritual director, Bill Kirkpatrick, um, in Earl's Court, and mu, musing that there was a void in the church

00:43:10.880 - 00:43:31.480

of conversation across difference. You know, there was this one set of people who were gay and kind of, you know, living reasonably happily and present in the church, but invisibly, and another group who knew nothing about them, and, and, because then, that was by then was post-Tigdon and post-issues in human sexuality and so on, so there were the beginnings of an

00:43:31.480 - 00:43:52.520

anti, a, of a conversation, and of an anti-gay movement. Yeah. Quite strongly. The homophobia was really beginning to develop. Yeah. So, but, but, and I was wondering, I guess after my therapy training, where's the conversation going on that might lead to some kind of resolution of, of this radical difference. Um, and talked a wee bit about it, and we, and I, and talking around people,

00:43:52.520 - 00:44:16.780

you know, and they, they clearly wasn't. So out of that, Bill and I decided that it, it would be right to launch something new. Right. Specifically to do that, you know, and I knew that LGCM, Richard Kirkpatrick, might well be upset by it. And indeed he was. And indeed he was. Very pleased. Yeah. Um, so actually, that decision was probably one of the things which began to cook,

00:44:16.900 - 00:44:37.220

to cause ripples of disrupt, disruption. Right. Because it affected the consultation as well, in the end. Yeah. Um, I spent some time organising a, um, oh, what's it called when you have a, a constitution. Yes. Because there was no, there was no constitution, there was no way of electing people, or deciding who was on the committee, or who the convener was going to be.

00:44:37.960 - 00:45:01.800

So, um, so we organised a constitution, and the first result of that was that somebody else got elected in my place as the convener, which was Stephen Coles. Ah. Which was fine, and that was really healthy. Very good. But I mean, so I was quite influential, I guess, in, yeah, beginning to put in place new models of how we were in the church. Yeah. Um,

00:45:03.040 - 00:45:23.080

and so changing attitude, initially, what did I do? Oh, I was, people say, you need to meet this bishop, you need to meet that bishop. And I wrote to various bishops out of the blue, and everyone that I wrote to agreed to meet me. Can't quite imagine that happening nowadays. No, it wouldn't absolutely, wouldn't happen at all. No, it wouldn't, would it? No. So, St Albans met me,

00:45:23.240 - 00:45:42.800

and Richard Harris. Yeah. Oxford met me. I probably organised the meeting. Well, well indeed, when I got to St Albans, in thinking I was just going to meet the bishop, he'd actually got other senior Darson staff in to meet me as well. Right, okay. So this was 95, 96, 97? Yeah, yes, probably, yeah. So, almost certainly, because I was Bishop Richard's

00:45:42.800 - 00:46:03.380

chaplain from 94 to 98. What, what? Almost certainly arranged for a meeting. Yes! How bizarre. Yes. And I remember I met him at his club in London, and we then, I don't know why, it must have been a nice day, we went and walked around the lake in St James's Park. Yeah, yeah. And I remember, we must have walked around it three or four times, and I was thinking,

00:46:03.700 - 00:46:27.420

this is just, what am I doing? Yeah. Talking to this senior bishop, walking around this lake, in sight of Buckingham Palace. Yeah. About sexuality and gay people in the church. This is astonishing. So, that was one of the, the first things that, that I did for Changing Attitude. But then, um, and this was a chance thing, I was worshipping, so I by then left the parish.

00:46:27.840 - 00:46:43.600

I'd got enough alternative funding to resign from the parish, was still doing the chaplaincy work. Right. Was earning some money through psychotherapy, and then got seed funding for Changing Attitude. Ah. So, in the end, I ran down the psychotherapy practice. Because that's one of the, the first question I wanted to ask is how you ended up leaving the parish.

00:46:43.820 - 00:47:17.880

Yeah. And, and what was that? Well, let's think, you see, I was in the parish for 14 years. Um, I, okay, let's, yeah, so let's go back to being in the parish. I knew I didn't want to go on to another parish job. Okay. I just couldn't stand the births, marriages, deaths. Oh, okay. Yeah, the pastoral ministry was not me. Um, I, I loved the deeply personal nature of what we did

00:47:17.880 - 00:47:43.480

together, the friendships, and of cultivating people who were theologically literate, who thought about things, and expansive in their imagination of what it meant to be a Christian, and who felt free of the kind of, yeah, the taboos and the guilts in redemption theology. But most parish ministries, not that, is it? Most parish ministries pretty

00:47:43.480 - 00:48:10.340

much. No, it's not. It's also, yeah. But I mean, you know, I was able to do a lot of that stuff, I suppose. Yeah. And they were really interested in it. And it was, you know, it was a very mixed, we were, numbers of African people from various parts of Africa, Nigerians I remember, Ghanaians, Kenyans, Ugandans, yeah. Um, and I couldn't see why that couldn't be a normative. Yeah. Yes,

00:48:10.480 - 00:48:36.360

model across the church, and yet I knew what a, you know, it'd take me 14 years of us, because it was a mutual thing, to get to that point. I didn't want to go and have to begin all over again from scratch. Yeah, I understand that. Um, plus on the other side, there was clearly something very positive going on inside me, that was moving me in a, you know, to do

00:48:36.360 - 00:49:08.160

something new. And I'm not somebody who has visitations or visions or, and I'm not into magical thinking. You know, my experience of God is very, absolutely non-concrete and, you know, and I've had to learn to trust and give myself to the fact that there, there is ultimate, profound, yeah, truth, goodness, energy, love, wisdom, beauty, glory, yeah, that is

00:49:09.040 - 00:49:31.100

more real than anything else. Truly more real. And, but just has to be given to. Right. You have to trust it. Yeah. But the more that you open yourself to it and give yourself to it, the more it becomes real and almost tangible. Yeah, I think tangible. You're a good Platonist, aren't you really? Yeah, totally. You are a good Platonist. I'm not, yes, I've not been good on the, I've

00:49:31.100 - 00:49:52.920

got some of this stuff, but I mean, yes. So, so, er, it, so I agreed that I would, I would resign, having been working part-time, and I needed therefore to look for somewhere else to move, and there were people in the congregation, er, one of them was the, er, manager of the trust, I think people's trust in Westminster Hospital, so he must have been earning quite

00:49:52.920 - 00:50:13.220

good. He'd, he'd been a government senior civil servant before that. Er, I remember he gave, gave me a thousand pounds towards mortgage deposit. Oh, wow. Extraordinary. Very kind. Yeah, it really was. So, I managed to get enough of a deposit together for a really nice ex-council property overlooking the All England North Tennis Club in Southfields. Yeah. You know,

00:50:13.280 - 00:50:38.660

it was, it was fantastic, south-facing terrace, just, and, and moved, and worked as a psychotherapist in Masseur there, that was integral to the psychotherapy, and began to develop changing attitude from there, and worshipped, actually, was the adjoining to my childhood parish, so I worshipped there quite a bit, where the then parish priest Bertrand Olivier was transforming

00:50:39.260 - 00:50:56.980

you, I mean, he was actually doing what I was, had done at St Faith's. Yeah. Yeah, completely reorganised the layout of the church, and, you know, it was in the sort of, he gradually made it more and more in the round, and yeah, um, it was really exciting. So there was, you know, it was amazing to see my own parish, my childhood parish church being transformed in a

00:50:56.980 - 00:51:25.920

way I would never have imagined, imagined. Right. Um, and, and, and beginning to form contacts with people at a senior level around the church, with bishops and so on, and, and being valued and welcomed, and, and, and in a way that process making me as much as it was me, yeah, doing something in the church. So, this is, this is the mid-90s and into the early noughties. Yes,

00:51:26.180 - 00:51:49.520

and the, well, so, and the key thing is then, is, uh, 97, the year of preparation for the Lambeth Conference in 98. Yeah. And I turned up at Southwark Cathedral a bit late one Sunday morning to be told as I walked through the door, it's full. But I think there were a couple of seats closed to go there, and I was with my then partner. So I said, yeah, fine. So we were shown to the

00:51:49.520 - 00:52:14.140

seats in the front, and in fact it was the row behind four rows of purple, and it was the final planning meeting in London for the Lambeth Conference of the planning committee, and all the bishops were there that morning, and Rowan was preaching. I looked at the thing, oh wow, Rowan's preaching. Great. And we got to the Gloria, and the congregation sit, sat while the

00:52:14.140 - 00:52:46.160

Gloria was sung, and we sat down, and around me, individuals, about eight or nine individuals stood up, and walked to the front, and unfurled banners, and it was, um, outrage. Ah. Protesting at the Church of England's refusal to meet Richard Kirker and LGCM, and, you know. I remember hearing this happening, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I was sitting there thinking, what? What? What's this? Okay. Very unanglican. Yeah. And at the end, um, then

00:52:46.160 - 00:53:09.060

Colin Slea stood up, and he was great, and he said, you know, you're really welcome. I'm glad that you're here this morning, and thank you. Yeah. For demonstrating in that way, uh, and I invite you to return to your seats now, so that we can continue the service. And that one of them then spoke, and said, we are here to protest against the refusal of the, blah, blah, blah, to meet LGCM, and

00:53:09.060 - 00:53:35.080

so, and I was on the LGCM board at that stage. So, I stood up. I think, oh my god, I, what? I stood up, and at that point, caught Geoffrey Thompson out of the corner of my eye, walking down, because he was also at the board of there, and said, I just wish to dissociate myself from what has been said. I am a member of the board of LGCM, and oh my goodness, slightly, I know, whatever. Did I say that? Yeah, I

00:53:35.080 - 00:53:56.620

think I did, actually. He, he, I mean, the guy who said it, he had been really antagonistic, and he was very, very hostile and negative. Right. Um, you know, and I said, and we are still hoping to meet, and you know, looking forward, and of course we want to. Anyway, so, so, at the end of the service, I then got into a series of conversations and introductions, kind of going up the scale of

00:53:56.620 - 00:54:15.360

people from around the Communion, which ended up with John Kulu Dungani, the Archbishop of Cape Town, who was responsible for the subsection that was going to be dealing with sexuality, who was looking for somebody who wasn't Richard Kirker to come and meet, talk to the Bishops. So, we had a conversation, and he must have decided fairly quickly that I

00:54:15.360 - 00:54:38.500

seemed to be a much safer person than Richard. So, I went back up to town the following morning and met him, and there was another Bishop in, yeah, there, from the group, um, and had a conversation and said, you know, yeah, I would, I would be very happy to do it, but only if it was a group that came. Yeah. And we worked together and presented as a group. So, I then began to get people together,

00:54:38.940 - 00:55:02.300

and I think I must have been to a general convention once in the States by then, so I'd met the integrity crowd and got them involved. So, um, we met every two months at St Martin-in-the-Fields, uh, on a weekday evening, and began to formulate a plan of action. You're almost, you're almost an accidental activist, aren't you? Oh, absolutely, totally, totally, yeah, I didn't plan any of it. That's, that's really the name of your,

00:55:02.320 - 00:55:24.440

of your biography, the accidental activist. You should definitely. That's a pretty good one. Yeah. Yeah, very good. Yeah. Um, so, and then we got to Lambeth, um, you know, we were supposed to be meeting the group right at the beginning, when they first met, and John Wynkoop hadn't told them in advance that he'd extended his invitation and that we were actually, had been interested for a year. Oh my goodness. They refused

00:55:24.440 - 00:55:50.880

to meet. Of course. We never met them, um, we organized an alternative campus meeting and so on, but we were, I was there for three weeks. So, I got to know from the inside for the first time, Right. And many of the people who were going to become key. Right. In the, so it wasn't, it was Richard who got his hands into the demon cast out by the Nigerians. Ah, yes, okay. But I

00:55:50.880 - 00:56:22.800

was there in the hall for the debate on Resolution 110. Yeah, 110. And, and saw George Carey in action and the incredibly poisonous atmosphere, you know, this real outpouring of foul, vitriolic, anti-gay stuff in the communion. Right. Um, and got, and we got, and integrity people came, so we got to work alongside them. So, we had, uh, a changing group of people there. We rented two,

00:56:22.920 - 00:56:47.240

two properties. So, there must have been 15 people present all the way through the three weeks of the conference. Right. So, out of that, and, and we produced a newsletter afterwards, I think. So, that, out of that evolved from, from the Southern Network, changing attitude, lots of groups. Yeah. Changing attitude newsletter, uh, campaigning role and,

00:56:48.680 - 00:57:08.980

and, and a deepening involvement both in this country and around the communion. Right. And I worked out, uh, knowing that Conservatives were turning up at communion meetings and at General Synod. I just started turning up at General Synod before I worked out that actually, if you had a stall, I could then get a badge and I could be there legitimately. Right. But I really, and then

00:57:08.980 - 00:57:30.960

from that, that we needed to be at communion meetings as well. So, changing attitude started paying for me to go to Primates meetings and Anglican Consultative Council meetings. And were you given access? Um, as much as any other media person was. Oh, okay. Yeah. I, they registered me as a media. Media. Yeah. Okay. Um, and it was very valuable in that,

00:57:31.160 - 00:57:58.160

for the first time, there was somebody blogging and writing about the experience from, not quite the inside, but from, yeah, the scene. Yeah. In a way that, that it had been entirely Conservative reportage up until then. Right. Um, so I, yeah, I mean, I can, I can see talking about it, but I was quite influential. Yeah. In changing, yeah, the whole dynamic of what was

00:57:58.160 - 00:58:20.620

going on in the context of increasing homophobia. Yes. Because at the same time the church had lost entirely that sort of open freedom that you and I both experienced, um, in the eighties and early nineties. Yeah. And it was getting worse and worse. And it was getting worse and more and more antagonistic and difficult for gay and lesbian clergy. Yeah. Yeah. And with the Church of England,

00:58:20.800 - 00:58:49.600

you know, post issues in 91 and then Sun of Issues. Sun of Issues. Yeah. Um, uh, and then, yeah, Geoffrey John. Yeah. Debacle in 98. Yeah. 98, 99. No, that was a bit later. It was early 2000s. It wasn't 2001. Gene Robinson was 2003. He only came just after that. I think Geoffrey was 2001. Right. Yeah. Uh, and I went to general, or maybe that was the first time I went, 2003.

00:58:50.180 - 00:59:09.780

I went and was there for Gene Robinson's confirmation and so on. And, um, yeah. Which, where he had to wear a bulletproof vest. Absolutely. And they had doctors laid on in case he was assassinated. Somebody tried to kill him. Yeah. I only discovered that last year. And I was around him a lot of the time and I didn't know any of that then. Right. Yeah. So,

00:59:09.900 - 00:59:28.660

I wouldn't have been in the firing line. Yeah, indeed. Yes. Yeah. And there was, the people were scared about it. They were worried it was gay. Oh, absolutely. I mean, yeah, the level of tension was huge. Um, but also very exciting. Oh, yeah. And I, and I, to discover the vibrancy of the Episcopal Church, you know, this convention hall, they had three,

00:59:28.720 - 00:59:53.360

they had three adjoining convention halls. Right. One for the, uh, clergy and laity convocation, one for the exhibition and one for, for worship. Right. So, each morning a thousand people with, you know, these, and there's a, there's an Episcopal Church, uh, sort of arts group. So, before the service and then during communion, uh, these images were being projected

00:59:53.360 - 01:00:18.300

onto the wall behind the altar. Just beautiful, you know, changing images from, yeah, art. Um, and just fantastic liturgy and music and yeah. They do it well. Passion. Absolutely. You know, like I wasn't meeting in England. Yeah. No. There's absolute conviction, conviction that we are about something which is life changing and transformative. And actually you hear it

01:00:18.300 - 01:00:50.940

when you hear Episcopal bishops speak in a way that you don't hear, I think, in English bishops speaking. There's an intimacy to their faith and a straightforwardness. Yeah. Which is very American. Yeah. But actually hugely refreshing. Yes. I agree. So, so, and, and since then, it's a funny kind of, what happened next? 2003 and we're now 2015. So, that's 12 years.

01:00:51.540 - 01:01:22.700

What on earth has gone on in the last 12 years? It's been attrition, depression, growing anger. Yeah. Again, because in civil society, bit by bit, life has been absolutely transformed from, from 97 and the Labour government election onwards. Yeah. Which began the whole legal process of transformation. And in the church, um, resistance, worse and worse

01:01:22.700 - 01:01:45.500

practice and culture and attitudes, um, that has now become intolerable. And that, you know, that is kind of, isn't it, um, condensing 12 years of horror. So, one of the things I've always thought about you is that you've tried to work very carefully with the bishops of the Church of England by having good, friendly conversations, treating them with great respect. Yeah. And

01:01:45.500 - 01:02:15.420

work, trying to work on the inside. Now, I've always been slightly suspicious of that because that there's a, there's a way in which the, the hierarchy can use that to neutralise the power of protest by drawing somebody in and making you feel part of a special network. Do you think that your, that programme of working with the bishops, having those conversations with

01:02:15.420 - 01:02:43.800

the bishops has been as fruitful as you would want it to have been? Or looking back on it now, do you think more challenge and more Kirker-esque behaviour would have been better? Well, it was quite helpful of course that Richard was there in LGCM because we could a bit be good by guy bad. Yeah, yeah. Um, but I don't think we were, as your language kind of, the bishops were initiating it

01:02:43.800 - 01:03:11.940

and drawing us into their world. Actually, we were initiating contact most of the time and allowing them then to set tone and context. I wasn't being provocative. We weren't in, in encounters with them, but we knew where we stood and we were very clear about what our agenda was and what our judgment was on their language and behaviour and attitudes. Yeah. Um, and in a

01:03:11.940 - 01:03:41.280

way, because we, two years ago we had a series of meetings in confidence with bishops, um, that we'd asked for and that we'd set the agenda for. Right. Um, and it meant they, they learnt a considerable amount from us and experientially from us because it wasn't just me, it was always two or three other trustees with me. Um, and that we had learnt a lot about them,

01:03:41.400 - 01:04:10.480

that they then knew we knew. Knew, yes. Yeah. So they had made themselves vulnerable to some degree. Um, knowing that we were very, you know, absolutely hot on maintaining confidentiality. But nevertheless, they, we saw into their world. Um, and I think, I mean, I guess I already knew what they were like. You know, I have a lot of respect for the quality of people who are our

01:04:10.480 - 01:04:43.640

bishops on the one side and, and believe as a Christian and as a humanist and, you know, that their identity, their selfhood needs to be affirmed and valued as much as any other human beings. Okay. Selfhood does. But I also, and I, and this feeling has grown stronger as the years have passed, also feel very, very angry and think a lot about what can be done and especially now,

01:04:43.800 - 01:05:11.600

and we might come to that at the end, what can I do in retirement, er, given the reputation that I have, that I might be in a position to do something that nobody else can do. Yeah. Because I was having a conversation this morning with somebody else and we, and this, this person was on the, the conservative wing of the church in reform and we both agreed with each other that

01:05:11.600 - 01:05:41.900

the culture of the Church of England is deeply dishonest and unhealthy because there is no honesty, public honesty, openness about what the Church of England is actually like in terms of the number of gay clergy, gay bishops, people in relationships. Yeah. The actual life of parishes and the, the reform person I was talking to was actually wanting the church to go down the line

01:05:41.900 - 01:06:02.020

of being like, this is our official doctrine, let's enforce it. Whereas clearly that is never going to happen. They're terrified. Well, they actually do not want to do that. They don't do that. But, but actually the other side of that, which of course, which is being, let's be honest and open about what's actually happening in the Church of England and what we're actually doing

01:06:02.020 - 01:06:27.540

is far too terrifying because then it negates the sort of public statements, which they have, feel they have to make because of the Anglican communion worldwide, because of the, um, conservative, ultra conservatives in the Church of England who are small in number, but very loud in voice. Yeah. And so one of the questions is where, where do we go from here now in a culture,

01:06:27.620 - 01:06:51.920

which is deeply dysfunctional and dishonest and unhealthy and in which everybody is frightened and angry. So the liberals are frightened and angry because it's our very being that's being denied. And the conservatives are frightened and angry because it's their fundamental belief that is being denied. Yeah. And the bishops, poor, poor lambs are in the middle,

01:06:52.940 - 01:07:20.960

being honest to nobody, not even themselves. Yeah. And deeply compromised. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So before we get there, there's another, one more key ingredient that I need to bring in. So, which is that I, I've realised eventually that really I'm a contemplative. Right. And I. You look great in a whipple Colin. Thank you. I really didn't, didn't know and it's,

01:07:21.020 - 01:07:47.100

and it is only in more recent years that I've twigged, actually that is what I am. And I've always wanted to be sexual and to live with somebody and to be involved in an intimate relationship. But I think there's been an equal, always wanted to be contemplative and on my own and, and quiet. So that at Westcott, the expectation was that you were in silence in

01:07:47.100 - 01:08:12.060

chapel six days out of seven for half an hour before the morning office. And I, I had, I had never, I'd been accepted for ordination training by then. I had never had a personal prayer life. Right. Very Anglican. First thing I do when anybody comes to me about the faith. Yeah. I, I always sit down and I teach them to pray before I teach them anything else. I teach

01:08:12.060 - 01:08:36.280

them to pray. This is what you have to do. And this is what these tools to pray before anything else. So, so, so, so, so I was saying the office and, and, and so I started and I had no idea what was happening in the silence or what I was supposed to be doing or looking for. I mean, I must've had some clues because Mark ran a spirituality class throughout the first year.

01:08:37.420 - 01:09:06.700

But I, I knew it was an essential ingredient of who I was. Okay. And then once I'd got into therapy and so on, you know, became integral to the kind of therapy training I was, I was doing, which was quite Eastern or influenced and yeah, because it got stout and so on. Um, and, and some of the others in training were quite airy fairy sort of dream work and birthing

01:09:06.700 - 01:09:41.580

and all of that stuff. Yeah. Which was my absolutely as well. So, um, and I've, and I have continued to commit myself to science, but it's, it's content, it's quality has changed radically over the time that I've been, the years I've been meditating. Um, so that the way I've worked in changing attitude and the way I, and what I'm then going to talk

01:09:41.580 - 01:10:21.360

about what I might do now is integral to my contemplative interior holistic energy self. And that what I think we generically are, are about in life or should be leading people into, and certainly what any faith community and church is a whole person integration, help creating healthy people, people who nourish themselves, you know, food wise, healthily,

01:10:22.080 - 01:10:50.200

yeah. Uh, who is pattern of life is, is healthy, who have a healthy interior life, who are, who give themselves to beauty, to creativity, yeah. To healthy relationships and who, who learn about these processes, how it is that you catch hold of the damaging, wounded, reactive, dualistic tendencies that we all have. This is so not contemporary Christianity,

01:10:50.200 - 01:11:12.660

you do realise. Absolutely not. I do. Absolutely. I know, I know. All right. But it's the only salvation ultimately. Yes. And actually, you know, whatever, whatever realm you're working or whatever you're doing, it's God to me about this stuff. And of course it's what works for people and therefore our society is desperate for, but not what the church currently is able

01:11:12.660 - 01:11:41.280

to deliver at all. Not at all. And it, you know, John Lee, he probably, no, no, no. Who was he, I think he's just, he's just retired because he's, he's got cancer. He was the clergy appointments officer. Okay. He was the guy who ran, he's a psychotherapist by background as well as a priest and he was the guy who ran the clergy psychotherapy. Yeah. So the church has in it, and in John's case

01:11:41.280 - 01:12:08.160

has had very much at its centre, people of great wisdom about, yeah. Do you know Bo Stevenson as well? I know the name. Yeah. He's a Jungian psychotherapist, he's the same. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, you know, so in my last years in Changing Attitude, I have been blogging about, from the perspective of how do we change things in a way that comes from a healthy integrated core,

01:12:08.580 - 01:12:32.380

but then that tells the truth to the church and brings to the church the shocking, uh, abusive, yeah, ignorance, which now marks the culture of the Church of England. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. This incredible blindness, not just to do, what's it, is it blindness? Because they, you know, we ask each of the bishops who've got children that we met, you know, don't your children tell

01:12:32.380 - 01:12:57.760

you, yeah, they all say, dad, you're crazy. You have no idea what, you know, they know it from, from their kids. Uh, but they're also, and I try, I've talked to some, I've edgily talked to some, not very much about their spirituality and how they pray and what kind of, whether they, whether they engage in silence and what they do in the silence or find in the silence and what

01:12:57.760 - 01:13:24.540

their, what kind of interior world they have in their relationship with God, what they think God is like, actually, you know, whether God is, and what, and they know in their heart and guts and soul, genuinely, unconditional, infinite, absolute self-giving love. Nothing can separate you from the love of God in Jesus Christ or death or anything else, all creation. Is that bishop,

01:13:24.720 - 01:13:53.460

what you really believe and experience and know to be true for yourself. Right. And I, you know, I did have eventually kind of, yeah, my body knows that to be true. That seems to have to be incredibly important. Does your body know this stuff? Do you feel it? Does your heart know it? Does it cry, melt or whatever when it's, yeah, when you

01:13:53.460 - 01:14:08.200

I've, I've been writing about, em, the death of, after he left us to depart, Warren Mitchell. Oh yes, yes, yes. And I saw him years ago at the National Theatre as Willie Lowman in Death of a Snailsman. Okay.

01:14:08.800 - 01:14:35.320

It's the only time I ever been aware that I've been in a theatre audience where suddenly everybody around me was weeping tears. How do we as a church bring people to the point of tears where something so meltingly beautiful is going on that breaks through all the defences, Susie Leith's defences, yours and mine, yeah.

01:14:36.040 - 01:15:00.380

We have to melt this crazy dualistic, you know, which they think the conversations are about and Yeah. And the, and the, you know, so on the healthy side of how change is achieved, some of us or whatever, okay, has to teach the church, find out how to discover this,

01:15:00.760 - 01:15:17.420

to be integral to the way the church has to become if it's to overcome its conflict. There's no other way, which is true of Islam and ISIS and all, you know, of any conflict. Well, if the church is going to survive. If it is going to survive, but it's got to know that spirituality

01:15:18.220 - 01:15:39.260

is about something much less dogmatic and rule-bound and, yeah, and conformist to all things it's lived with and thought, you know, thinks it's about than it actually is about. Because God is way bigger than that and way, you know, and is immersed in all of creation, yeah, and every human life and every fibre and, yeah, vibration.

01:15:39.260 - 01:16:04.300

And that would be the similar journey that I would say I've been on in the last five or 10 years. And, you know, I'm a good Anglo-Catholic, but that's to the nines and it has to be done in a particular way and much less interested in that and much more interested in, in that sense of being open to God and trying to be, trying to be healthy

01:16:04.980 - 01:16:29.140

and not forcing yourself into a particular mould because that's what a particular book says. Personally, I find a lot of the attitudes to scripture that are being used to beat gay people at the moment and they're profoundly idolistic and, and, and, and, and unhelpful. And the ignorance of history.

01:16:29.360 - 01:16:45.940

Yes. But this stuff was stupid 150 years ago, let alone 50, let alone honest to God, let alone the last 10, 20, 30 years. And there is, and in the holistic realm, there's so much exploration writing and some of it

01:16:45.940 - 01:17:04.120

has been wacky and drug related and, you know, cranky Californian and all of that. Yeah, okay, okay, okay. And shelves and bookshelves full of stuff, which actually is just bollocks. But there are also people with the most profound exploration of boundary crossing and exploring,

01:17:04.400 - 01:17:17.340

you know, deep personal experience and, and change lives and, yeah, an openness to God's extraordinary creative love. So one of the last things I wanted to ask you was, where do you see yourself now? You've retired from Chinese Attitude.

01:17:18.060 - 01:17:32.280

Um, you blogged once about how your body was reacting to being out of this sort of toxic, poisonous atmosphere of the church. Mm. You've been ill, haven't you?

01:17:32.420 - 01:17:39.520

And I suspect that's part of it, isn't it? I think so, yeah. It's your body just going, bleh, I've had enough. It feels like it's related to that, the shit that gets in.

01:17:39.660 - 01:17:46.580

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So the challenge then, of course, is you're still a member of the Church of England and committed to it.

01:17:48.040 - 01:17:59.760

You're still passionate about justice for LGBTI people in the church. The… What's next? The thing inside me still seems to be making me passionate.

01:18:00.140 - 01:18:21.960

Right. It's sort of that weird, me, not me, you know, it's, I, I'm, I'm not making proactive decisions, I'm just discovering that some, that thing inside me is still at work, yeah. So, uh, my spiritual director, who's still Henry, says don't do anything for a year.

01:18:22.200 - 01:18:38.880

So it works. That works on one side. Um, and there's the voice. So, and I, yeah, for, for three months, I was exhausted, I didn't feel well,

01:18:39.520 - 01:19:05.760

my belly was really unsettled, I feel a whole lot better now, my energy is returning, and my clarity, I couldn't, yeah, couldn't make sense of things. So, I want to start blogging again, I want to set up my own, either blog or website, without any commitment that I'm going to be regular or whatever, but when the, when

01:19:05.760 - 01:19:20.420

the spirit moves me, I will write something. And I want to integrate activism with spirituality and contemplation. Spiritual direction? No, not called to that, what, me?

01:19:20.580 - 01:19:33.820

Yes. No, no, no, no, absolutely no, I mean, somebody, one person has come to see me and might want to come and see me again once her spiritual director retires, but I haven't committed myself to seeing her.

01:19:33.820 - 01:20:00.420

No, no, no, no, playing with my garden railway, just, you know, mooching through the day, enjoying my garden and just, changing my dynamic with life, to give myself time to actually just enjoy the person in front of me, beauty, yeah, exhibitions, pictures, just stop,

01:20:00.420 - 01:20:12.960

which I've never done in my life and just gaze at them and see what effect it has. They're very bad at stopping, aren't they? Terrible at stopping. So, I'm doing a lot more, slow walking, gazing.

01:20:13.680 - 01:20:24.540

I'll go out of an evening and just watch the sunset rather than, yeah. Hopefully with a glass of wine. Yes. So, what we do, so, so what I, right, and what I'm thinking about is,

01:20:25.760 - 01:20:39.440

that I also want to, to write with an edge. Yeah. I want to begin to say to the church, and to describe the church, my own experience of integrating spirituality, sexuality, campaigning,

01:20:41.080 - 01:21:01.660

contemplation, silence, stillness, inner, inner life, yeah, and to, and to begin to write what the church now looks like to me, which is abusive, shockingly, scandalously ignorant of spiritual depth and interiority. It's not that there aren't people across the Church of England,

01:21:01.900 - 01:21:14.720

but they're so invisible to the church. That's part of the problem we're up against, and they will be invisible to synod. You know, and it'll have this outrageously awful liturgies and so on. I mean, just shit, crap stuff.

01:21:15.160 - 01:21:19.620

Yeah. You know. I look forward to experiencing it. Oh, God, I've never been.

01:21:21.280 - 01:21:33.460

And something else. Right. And, and, and let it become what it becomes. I would absolutely trust that there is something more potent than any of the church crap

01:21:33.460 - 01:21:47.820

throwing through, flowing through creation, through globally around the world. Yeah, that in which God is awakening human consciousness to much more profound spirituality than the stuff the church has on offer. Yeah.

01:21:48.700 - 01:21:52.940

In its official. Yeah, yeah, no, I completely get that. I completely get that. I absolutely get that.

01:21:53.140 - 01:22:04.740

And yeah, so that's what I want to do. And I don't quite yet know, but I'm, it's increasingly coming to focus in my mind. So what would you say? I mean, I see a lot of young people who are thinking about being ordained.

01:22:04.840 - 01:22:10.460

In fact, somebody this morning, I'd only said I was teaching her to pray. Yeah. One of the first things I was doing. He's recently come to faith.

01:22:10.640 - 01:22:17.480

I taught her how to pray. He's been very serious about it. And I'd said to him in that conversation, have you ever thought about what your ministry will be as you go forward?

01:22:17.720 - 01:22:25.480

Have a think about that. And he's come back saying, well, he's thinking he might want to be ordained. Hmm. Now he's a straight man, wife and kids.

01:22:25.740 - 01:22:33.980

So he hasn't got that. He hasn't got that problem at least. Yeah. But one of the real questions is what would you say to a young gay or lesbian person

01:22:34.560 - 01:22:53.560

who is feeling a calling to ministry in the contemporary church of England? I am not sure I'd be able to say to anybody with all any degree of honesty, go ahead and do this without having to qualify it with a, you are going to get badly hurt and abused by the institution.

01:22:53.760 - 01:23:05.620

You need to think very, very carefully whether you want that or whether you might not be able to exercise a ministry in a way outside of the church. Yeah. What would you say?

01:23:06.500 - 01:23:22.380

It's helpful that you say that first because it's got me to think about it. So, you know, I think clever remarks like I'd want to be non-directed. Right. But that I think I would want to treat them as an adult capable of making their own adult

01:23:22.380 - 01:23:39.360

decision and set out those options for the person. So, okay. I think you would be joining an institution which is extremely unhealthy, very toxic and in which you might find it really hard to be the kind of person you might dream of being.

01:23:40.380 - 01:24:00.020

But also if there is genuinely something going on inside you, then that has to be respected and trusted. And it might be that despite that, you are being drawn in to ministry in the church. And you just have to talk to people, listen to yourself very carefully and be aware that

01:24:00.020 - 01:24:17.800

you're presented with a conflict which might be extremely painful and that might mean it's quite short term. You might not be in it for life if you do decide to be ordained. And actually, as we spoke earlier, I can also hear you saying that to me in the middle of

01:24:17.800 - 01:24:42.780

ministry and feeling as I do about the way the church is behaving and the way the church I think is incapable of changing. And where that leaves people like me in the midst of ministry, capable, committed, good at what we do, but looking at an institution to which we feel increasingly less attached.

01:24:43.100 - 01:25:02.220

Yeah, yeah. The church is full of extraordinary people, great depth and intelligence and integrity and competence and goodness. But they are, it takes me back to the conversation we were having before the thing got rolling,

01:25:04.400 - 01:25:19.240

about competence and so on and parish ministry and what it's like. I haven't got a licence or a PTO. My bishop won't give me a PTO because I'm in a civil partnership and I made it very clear that it was a sexual relationship.

01:25:20.440 - 01:25:37.500

I've actually had been sent out of the blue by the safeguarding officer for the diocese, the CRM form, because he's discovered that mine is out of date. And I've had one or two conversations, both with myself and other people, as to whether or not I want to fill it in and submit it, whether I really want to, which would mean

01:25:37.500 - 01:25:58.060

I would have to go back to Nick and say, will you or will you not give me a PTO? We're just starting to interregnum, so there's a kind of another reason for doing it. But I hadn't been to church for seven weeks until last Sunday when I thought there's somebody I really like talking with, went.

01:25:59.720 - 01:26:12.640

And church just makes me angry. Worship makes me angry. The incompetence of servants, the incompetence of the language of intercessions, the shocking choice of hymns, the incompetence of the whole package,

01:26:12.980 - 01:26:24.500

of the absence of silence, of anything. It's just so badly done. Yeah. But this is back to the beginning of your ministry, isn't it?

01:26:24.520 - 01:26:34.280

Absolutely. It is absolutely the beginning of your ministry, when you thought, I want to do this sector. I intuited this stuff, you know where? Yeah, back then, I knew it.

01:26:34.420 - 01:26:53.080

Yes. And I just, you know, so, and actually it started with a liturgy that somebody had photocopied from a prayer book from German evangelical sisterhood, which was awful. And afterwards, I discovered that others in the congregation were looking across at me

01:26:53.080 - 01:27:06.520

to see whether I was saying the responses, to see whether or not it received my cremata. All right. But what I was thinking was, do you need to... Hey, hang on, hang on, let's pause and then we'll come back.

01:27:06.680 - 01:27:27.720

Okay, no, no, let's just, we're just going to finish with a conversation about the current state of the Church of England and its leadership, whether we think that it's capable of meeting the challenge of the age and what it might look like in fairly short order, whether it can actually reimagine itself.

01:27:28.020 - 01:27:43.860

What do you think? The challenge of the age. So, as I see it, we are living at a time of extraordinary evolution and change, such as has never been before.

01:27:44.180 - 01:27:58.820

Yeah. You know, awareness, research, consciousness of the scale of the creation in which we live. And the threats to it. And the threats to it, and the potentials as well.

01:28:01.240 - 01:28:25.340

And that in my interest set of sexuality and spirituality, the most extraordinary global changes in relation to lesbian and gay people, transgender, intersex, you know, it grows and grows. And for the younger generation in the West, the ease with which they live with fluidity nowadays.

01:28:29.620 - 01:28:51.780

And on the one side, this is the work, this is the creation in which we are living. Of extraordinary, imaginative, possible change, exponential change in the way that we imagine what it is to be human, to be sexual, to be gendered. All of which is actually deeply authentic and healthy.

01:28:53.440 - 01:29:19.480

Whereas traditionalists or conservatives in the church almost certainly judge much of this as being ungodly, evil, you know, all of that stuff. And we live at a time when there has been an unfolding of awareness of what it means for a human being to be spiritual.

01:29:20.480 - 01:29:35.640

To be a healthy, integrated, flowing, alive, energised. What it means to be all those things. And that any human being could be like that. We all have the potential.

01:29:37.820 - 01:30:01.440

And that my vision is that any group of people, you know, national, international organisation working with spirituality is going to have to learn its way into understanding that and working with that as its vision. Whether it's Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, every institution has got,

01:30:01.440 - 01:30:21.260

even if it continues to be quite institutionalised in its pattern of life, it has got to understand that every human being is potentially innately spiritual and full of the depth of God's presence and love. But wouldn't the church claim that it knows that anyway?

01:30:21.640 - 01:30:37.060

It would claim it and clearly through its teaching and theology and practice it absolutely, absolutely gives the light of it. Right. To the point that it is incredibly unhealthy, deeply damaging to individual lives, that

01:30:38.060 - 01:31:07.300

makes clergy and bishops incompetent, truly incompetent as spiritual teachers and leaders. And I think I feel called to begin to write about this in a much more radical way and to say, because I'm sure that most of them would be able to see it, this is what a healthy human spiritual life looks like to me, this is what the church is actually practising

01:31:08.000 - 01:31:29.820

and the church is going to die or just fade away in its own current entity. And I have no doubt that new things will be born from it. But it might not be church as the church thinks it has a right to exist forever. In our lifetime, we've seen the collapse of the Church of England.

01:31:30.860 - 01:31:48.220

Certainly when I was ordained 25 years ago, the vast majority of the population of the country would have identified as Church of England, even if they didn't attend. What has been very noticeable in the last 10 years has the complete collapse of that cultural assumption of Anglicanism.

01:31:48.700 - 01:32:00.820

Yeah. And the people who would previously just simply have said Church of England are now not saying Church of England, they're saying nothing. And I wonder whether the Church of England has anything to say to those people

01:32:01.400 - 01:32:16.220

or whether we're more interested in the ever-decreasing minority who are self-identified, conservative and narrow. It's interested in saying things to those people because it thinks they're going to buy what it's got to say.

01:32:16.620 - 01:32:31.400

They're not at all interested in what the church has got to say. The dynamic is that people are simply not interested in what the church peddles in terms of practice and involvement and spiritual, you know, congregational spiritual life. I would agree.

01:32:31.400 - 01:32:45.720

They're just not interested. And I sit next to people in church sometimes when I'm a stranger and ask the person next to me why they're there and nobody ever gives a positive answer. They don't really know why they're there or what they believe.

01:32:46.400 - 01:32:56.960

They're just, you know, because... They just always have been. Yeah, habitual or whatever, yeah. So there's a void at the centre of Church of England life.

01:32:57.300 - 01:33:11.140

People do not really know why they belong, why they're there, what it's for any longer, I don't think. And the answer the artificial giving is giving is reform and renewal, which is partly more of the same.

01:33:11.480 - 01:33:17.560

Let's ordain a whole bunch more new people. Let's increase the number of ordained clergy. Go for growth. Let's go for growth.

01:33:18.460 - 01:33:33.020

It cannot possibly work because it's based on, it's rootless. There is no understanding of what it is that people are rejecting, and they are actively rejecting it. But they're just sort of modifying and offering more of the same.

01:33:33.300 - 01:33:45.660

And it's based on that anecdote evidence thing, isn't it, which has been ripped apart by actually everybody saying none of this is actually true. You're just making it up. There's something else from the lexicus that we haven't talked about, which is the

01:33:45.660 - 01:34:03.020

Anglican Communion. And the international dimension of this. I've been to Africa a number of times and got first hand experience of what this proclaimed African Christianity is like, which, you know, and the fact that maybe they're

01:34:03.020 - 01:34:20.520

going to missionize us in the West because we've lost it. Well, it's a different sort of corruption there to ours, but it is nevertheless a false Christianity as much as ours has become a false Christianity, which is partly signs and miracles and wonders.

01:34:21.060 - 01:34:34.320

And if you come to church and God is going to bless you, and if you learn how to pray the right way, and if you commit yourself in the right way, he's going to make you rich. You're going to be, yeah, absolutely. It's awful.

01:34:35.760 - 01:34:52.380

There's nothing that I would recognize as being particularly Christian about what is manifest there, apart from the breadth of pastoral care and relationships and involvement of people in communities, you know, those things. But those are no longer enough for Christianity to survive anywhere in the world.

01:34:52.460 - 01:35:04.920

People are looking for something different, aren't they? Intuitively, they know there's something here which has to be much more core to their experience of life and who they are. That's what people are searching for.

01:35:05.880 - 01:35:24.240

And I think they're discerning whether they're finding it in New Age stuff and alternatives as much as they are in church. But there is a growing network of people, and they're there in Christianity in the Church of England, as elsewhere, who do know about this stuff.

01:35:24.300 - 01:35:33.380

You do. I do. Who are, yeah, searching and longing for change. Eventually, that energy will flow.

01:35:34.060 - 01:35:55.640

I think it will naturally tip the scales in the end. The question is whether it flows within the Church of England or whether the Church of England will tie itself up in homophobic nods. No, I think I see it changing already because I meet more and more people who know that

01:35:55.640 - 01:36:15.440

what we have is rubbish and who are seeking something of great depth and profundity and authenticity. And so this rolling wave will gradually roll out across the Church. And one day, the bishops will wake up, except it will evolve over a length of time, and

01:36:15.440 - 01:36:25.500

discover that it's just changed around them. I don't think there's going to be a great moment of transformation there. They will just discover that what they thought they were presiding over doesn't exist any longer at all.

01:36:25.500 - 01:36:31.120

Well, that's actually true already, isn't it? Yeah, it is. You think they're presiding over a church which actually, for the most part, ignores them.

01:36:32.680 - 01:36:44.680

It's faithless. In the past, I was the last person to talk about faith and trust in God and so on. Actually, I think it is profoundly faithless. I think what the Archbishop is doing and what's going on at Lambeth Palace is profoundly

01:36:44.680 - 01:37:02.660

lacking trust in God. But actually, if only they opened their innate sense, their intuition, their subtle feelingness, they would see God doing extraordinary, beautiful things all over the place, around the globe. Just none of it happens to be where the Church thinks it ought to be.

01:37:04.220 - 01:37:07.020

OK. That's a good place. That's a good place. That's a very good place.

01:37:07.720 - 01:37:10.440

Thank you, Colin. Thank you very much. Let's have a cup of tea.