00:00:00.000 - 00:00:33.560

Jeff, could you tell me a bit about your background, your childhood, where you grew up? Well, I was born in Australia and I spent the first two or three years there before my parents, who had emigrated there after the war, returned with me along with my then brother and my two older sisters. And we remained a family of four as I grew up in Kent until the birth of my younger sister in 1960. Effectively, we operated as two families. My elder siblings had all moved away by the time I really got to know them.

00:00:33.940 - 00:00:56.440

And so it was me and my younger sister. Right. So I grew up in Canterbury and I went to a local county primary school and failed my 11+, failed my audition to get into the cathedral choir, so I was a glowing failure. I was going to say, it's a good, you know, you can see a PhD coming up almost immediately.

00:00:56.620 - 00:01:24.720

Indeed, indeed. Went to secondary modern school and I stayed there for six years because I had to take CSEs before O-Levels. They didn't do A-Levels. So you had to do CSEs first, then they let you do O-Levels? Then they let you do O-Levels and they weren't equipped to teach A-Level there, so I had to be transferred to the grammar school. Since by that time, I had discerned a calling to ordination and it required me to go and study at a higher level.

00:01:25.500 - 00:01:50.580

And my then bishop required me to go to King's College London. There was no question of it being anything else. Who was your bishop? Tony Tremlett was the Bishop of Dover and I remember going to see him in the late 1970s with my shoulder-length hair. He lived on a hillside at St. Martin's and it was a very blowy day and as he arrived at the door, you know, I was busy sort of straightening myself up.

00:01:50.640 - 00:02:05.580

And he said, don't worry about that, your hair is rather long. He said, so long as you don't get like Absalom. You know what happened to him, don't you? And of course, I didn't know. I never touched the Altestment. And then he told me, well, you got caught in a tree and they came along and killed it.

00:02:06.480 - 00:02:30.620

This is a nice opening to our interview, Bishop. So was your family a religious family? Did you go to church as a family? No, we were hatch match and dispatch Christians and I got into church really via the other boys who I played football with in the street. Because on a Friday night, they all used to buzz off early and I discovered they were going to choir practice.

00:02:30.620 - 00:02:50.260

And when they told me you got paid, I asked if I could join. So I did. I went to join and I had quite a good treble voice because, as I said earlier, I auditioned for the Cathedral Choir. And if you had quite a good voice, you got creamed off to sing solos at weddings. Were you warmer?

00:02:50.660 - 00:03:10.380

Well, it was, you know, it was half a crown a throw. And we were in the parish that had the oldest church in northwest Europe. So, you know, you could you could clear five weddings on a Saturday and go home with quite a lot of dosh. But that's what got me there. But it isn't what kept me there.

00:03:10.540 - 00:03:39.740

I mean, what really kept me and inspired my sense of calling was the parish priest and my R.E. teacher. And between them, Father Donaldson and Mr. Priest really taught me a depth of spirituality and a language, an easy language to talk about God and Jesus without feeling embarrassed or ashamed. And I was I've always been very grateful to those two in particular for that,

00:03:39.740 - 00:03:59.260

because it really saw me through the next phase of preparing myself for ordination, going to what was then a selection conference and went to an Ackham. That's right. And I was conditioned. Were you older than when you did A-levels? Were you two years older than all the others?

00:03:59.300 - 00:04:13.240

I was old. Yes. All the boys that I'd been at school with were in the upper sixth when I was in the lower sixth. Right. Because it was a bit of there was it. But it wasn't too jarring. I didn't find it so really. We hadn't seen each other for four or five years.

00:04:13.440 - 00:04:26.720

And, you know, by the time you were 18, that's that's quite a big chunk of your life. Yeah. So that didn't really bother me. And did you go straight to King's London from there? Yes. I had it in my head that somehow I would not.

00:04:27.480 - 00:04:46.620

My brain was probably as big as it was ever going to be. And I wasn't a natural academic. And unlike my own children who've been taught how to pass exams, I didn't. So I went with minimal grades. I think that King's required me to have two C's to enter the Faculty of Theology.

00:04:46.800 - 00:05:12.600

And I actually got a C, a D and an E. So another failure. But I got a letter from the from the dean of King's, the very smooth Sydney Hall Evans, the next day saying, you know, we've got your results. We'd still like you to come anyway. And that was good. So, you know, off I trundled to London straight away with my suitcases sitting on the platform and with my mother sitting by my side, waving me off.

00:05:14.400 - 00:05:42.400

And and I entered the first year at King's College London and lived in community at the then theological hostel in Vincent Square. Right. Was that because it was cheap? It was certainly inexpensive, but it was also a special design that the dean had got, because in those days, most people's training, there was no such thing as a part time course. It was all residential training, but training lasted for five years.

00:05:43.240 - 00:06:11.120

But the course that I went on, the King's course, was a specially reduced course of four years, where you spent three years reading theology in the university and you spent one year at theological college, which was then at St. Augustine's in Canterbury. So I knew about that because I knew some of the students who'd been there. I'd even come across a very young looking then Ken Leach, who was on the teaching staff at the time.

00:06:11.120 - 00:06:48.740

And yes, so I think that, yes, but what happened in my first term at King's was the House of Bishops met with Synod and they were looking to close some theological colleges. And one of them that got the axe was St. Augustine's. So I found myself having to look for a theological college at the end of my time at university, which would offer me a one year course. And I found Chichester. And it was Chichester that I went to.

00:06:50.240 - 00:07:19.680

It was Chichester. I had no idea. I was terribly naive about churchmanship and all that paper. So, you know, if you look at my Crockford's entry, you think quite naturally that I'm a conservative Anglo-Catholic. And in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. But I can still genuflect, even at my age. I can just about get down and up again. So once ordained, just counter me through the career after that.

00:07:20.120 - 00:07:47.020

OK, well, between university and theological college, I spent two years working in the health service in psychiatry. I worked at the Royal Free Hospital, first of all, as an auxiliary nurse in their psychiatric unit. And then I transferred because I was attached to a church and the vicar there wanted me to do more regular hours. So I transferred to the occupational therapy department where I was in charge of the OT workshop.

00:07:47.800 - 00:08:13.360

So it meant I had to count out the chisels and make sure they all came back at the end of the day. Then I went to theological college and then I was ordained into London diocese to serve at St Mary Primrose Hill in the Episcopal area of Edmonton. I had four very happy years there. It was a fabulous time, brilliant priest. Was four years an exceptionally long first curacy?

00:08:13.460 - 00:08:31.340

It was, but it was because at the end of my third year, my vicar left to do another job. And so I offered to stay and hold the interregnum. And that was a good experience for me. But it was it was a very formative time.

00:08:31.460 - 00:09:01.000

And again, with an exceptionally brilliant priest who I admired enormously. My big problem, I think, in those days was that I admired other people, but wasn't quite sure about myself. So I spent a lot of time wanting to be like other people instead of discovering me. And Richard, my vicar, I think helped me grow in confidence in such a way that I was able to eventually be more the person that I am, rather than just wanting to be a carbon copy of someone else.

00:09:03.340 - 00:09:11.440

And from there? I was then translated to... You've done a number of head office jobs, haven't you? I've done some...

00:09:11.440 - 00:09:33.500

Regional office jobs. At that time, I was translated to what we called the North East Frontier of London Diocese and into a parish in Enfield where I was a youth officer. I was a youth officer for the deanery of Enfield, which was a significant deanery. It had had 30 parishes in it.

00:09:33.620 - 00:09:44.320

So it was quite big. And it had demographically was really very varied. So you had the concrete jungle of Edmonton Green. There was nothing green in Edmonton.

00:09:44.940 - 00:10:01.520

Right up to the leafy suburbs of Enfield and Clay Hill and places like that. Right on the very edge of the M25. It was a good time. And it was a time when I had married and had a young family.

00:10:02.660 - 00:10:18.100

But it was a time that lasted. It lasted its three years and it was good. But three years was enough. And we had as a family really rather missed a bit more of urban life in London.

00:10:18.860 - 00:10:42.840

So I looked to make a move. What I knew at this time was that because of my views on the ordination of women was that there weren't going to be many jobs for me in the Diocese of London. So I opted to go to Southwark where my former vicar had gone and he helped me find a place. And I joined a team ministry in Greenwich called Kidbrook.

00:10:43.880 - 00:11:07.740

And I was vicar in the Kidbrook team ministry with particular responsibility for this gorgeous little church on the council estate called St Nicholas. And I stayed there for seven years. Which was the longest that any clergy person had actually ever stayed. And from there I had to determine what my next move was going to be.

00:11:07.740 - 00:11:42.960

And my neighbour who was on the other side of the A2 but actually belonged in a different deanery, the Reverend Tony Crow, was about to move into the penal service as a prison chaplain. Having served at St Luke's for I think 22 or 23 years. And Tony was a very affable man and very welcoming when I first met him. But on my side of the A2 we knew all about what was supposedly his only ministry.

00:11:43.700 - 00:12:08.400

The reality was that actually St Luke's Charlton was just a very ordinary run along sort of parish doing all the regular things that you do in parish ministry. But of course the thing that hit the headlines in those days was their responsibilities and support for gay and lesbian couples. So that's really where the story began. It had begun under him.

00:12:11.160 - 00:12:41.380

And when I became rector there I decided one of the first things that we were going to do was to research the story and try and hold it together. Because there were plenty of people in the congregation who held the story in their memories. But they were going to be dead within 20 years and then the story would have died with them. From the point at which you went there, what was the formation of your own thinking about same-sex relationships up to that point?

00:12:41.640 - 00:12:49.580

Well, up until that point my... Because we were almost the same age. We are, you are a little younger than me Jeremy. Very little.

00:12:49.720 - 00:13:11.840

You are a little bit weeks younger. My understanding had been this. I had, I think I had my first serious encounters with gay men. That is knowing about them when I was first of all at theological college.

00:13:12.840 - 00:13:35.540

And it was an interesting time because many of them were well and truly sorted out gay men. But there were a number who were quite unsorted. And quite often it was the unsorted who gave the bad publicity to one and all. And I guess that's the case for everybody growing up.

00:13:35.640 - 00:13:53.540

But it just seemed particularly acute amongst gay men. Was it managed, how was it managed by the theological college? Well, not very well really. And certainly when I went to my second theological college, I can remember the opening night.

00:13:54.320 - 00:14:01.760

It was Chichester. It was Chichester. The opening night we had an address from the principal. And I sat in my pew in the chapel.

00:14:02.360 - 00:14:20.520

And he sat at the very front. And he was a lovely and well-intended man. But he'd been clearly beamed in to sort the place out. So the opening words of his address that night were, I'd like to welcome you all here.

00:14:21.500 - 00:14:32.640

Now I have to tell you there are three things I will not have in this college. I will not have any drunkenness. I will not have any sexual promiscuity of any kind. And I will not have any overt homosexuality.

00:14:32.880 - 00:14:47.520

Now I'm terribly sorry, but I've got to say this. And I found myself sitting there thinking, what have I come to? This is the most extraordinary beginning of my theological formation. And it was really quite repressive.

00:14:48.380 - 00:14:57.680

In my time there, a student was sacked. For one of these misdemeanours. For one of these misdemeanours. And actually he was a very good friend of mine.

00:14:58.020 - 00:15:12.720

We've not stayed in touch since. But he was a good friend of mine. And when he got sacked, it was me he rang up and asked if I'm just going to spend some time with him. So we had dinner together and offered him support.

00:15:13.980 - 00:15:29.060

And he was translated to another theological college where he thrived. Ironically it was Queen's. But it was absolutely perfect. But he thrived and did very well there.

00:15:29.060 - 00:15:58.580

And has been a very solid, able, faithful priest since that time. When I was a curate, in my first curacy, I came across my first lesbian couple who wanted a committed partnership. And I remember observing the vicar doing a very simple prayer of blessing over their rings. Which they exchanged quietly, without any fuss, after a Sunday service inside a chapel.

00:15:59.140 - 00:16:19.460

There was no ritual, no liturgy, no pomp and ceremony, no singing of hymns. It was just done on the quiet while everybody else was having a cup of tea at the back of the church. And I got to know Sheila and Helen really quite well. One of them I had known in a previous life as a teenager.

00:16:20.460 - 00:16:40.140

She had served in my local church but was single at that time. So I got to know them really quite well and had dinner at their house. And of course I discovered the things that you discover about most gay or lesbian couples. And that is they do the normal things that normal people do.

00:16:40.760 - 00:16:54.560

They have rows, they do the shopping together, they do the cleaning, the ironing. And they have conversations and occasionally they invite friends around. They have friends. And in this particular case I became one of them.

00:16:54.760 - 00:17:06.760

And I became very fond of Sheila and Helen. And they have since gone their separate ways. And they have both stayed within the church. Which has been fantastic.

00:17:07.380 - 00:17:30.840

They have both been ordained now. So those are my early experiences. And of course by the time I went to Charlton I was not fazed by any of this. And indeed I had been someone who had shared in the support of gay and lesbian couples.

00:17:31.480 - 00:17:54.800

But like most clergy in those days did it on the quiet. It was a kind of, it was not a secret. But it was not something that was held publicly. What happened at Charlton was that I found myself entering a parish with a 25 year history of supporting gay and lesbian couples by the time I got there.

00:17:55.380 - 00:18:14.380

And it had been done with quite a lot of publicity. I thought that there were two weaknesses in the whole system when I got there. The one question that they were embarrassed to ask me at interview. But which I did get asked informally by members of the congregation was how did I feel about all of this.

00:18:14.740 - 00:18:31.280

To which I could quite honestly say I do not have a problem with this at all. Because people are people. And church is for everybody. But what was clear to me was that my lovely predecessor who had really blazed a trail for this.

00:18:32.620 - 00:18:57.980

Had really done it under what I can only describe as a kind of informal parish policy of you do it vicar and we will back you up. Yes. Rather than it actually being a parish policy. And so what I determined when I went there was that it was going to become a parish policy that moved from you do it vicar and we will back you up to we are in this together.

00:18:58.420 - 00:19:19.480

And we are actually going to do this supportively. So what I arranged for was when any couples came to see me I arranged that they had the equivalent of marriage preparation. Yes. And that was always done with me and a member of the laity from the congregation.

00:19:20.260 - 00:19:30.120

So there were people in the congregation who took part in the preparation got to know the couples. And then eventually. So that's what you would have done for heterosexual couples. That's what I would have done for heterosexual couples.

00:19:30.280 - 00:19:41.600

Yes. Yes. I think the other thing to flag up at this point is that when I was just party to hearsay as to what life was like in childhood. Yes.

00:19:41.600 - 00:19:53.740

You would imagine that there was a shed load of couples lining up at the vicarage door. The reality is that you might get two couples a year. Yes. They were not huge numbers.

00:19:54.000 - 00:19:59.320

No. And did you get a lot of heterosexual couples marrying? Yes. It was a busy church in that respect.

00:19:59.320 - 00:20:04.280

It was a busy church. Yes. I think that in my first year there it was a changing demography. Yes.

00:20:05.120 - 00:20:13.040

Big parish. There were 22,000 in the parish. And I think in my first year we took over 100 funerals. Yes.

00:20:13.220 - 00:20:26.300

And we had something like 20 weddings. Okay. So actually a couple of gay or lesbian couples turning up was sort of maybe demographically appropriate in that sense. Nobody really batted an eyelid.

00:20:26.920 - 00:20:41.540

Exactly. There were a couple of humorous occasions when there was a service of blessing. And, you know, the old girls would actually wait outside the church door. And I remember overhearing one of them saying,

00:20:42.060 - 00:21:02.560

Yeah, there's some sort of do going on in the church, but I can't see any sign of the bride. But, I mean, it was a fabulous experience. And we had some very strict regulations. I mean, we would say, we'd like to know what you want, and this is what we can do.

00:21:03.320 - 00:21:27.900

So there was no question of anybody dressing up as brides and grooms. There was no sense in which anybody could accuse us of making fun of heterosexual marriage. So there was nothing pretentious in that respect. And that was an agreed policy by the church council.

00:21:27.900 - 00:21:51.700

And the liturgical parameters under which you operated. Well, this is what we did. About this time I decided to go and study for a research degree, and I did this in the United States. And I decided that what I wanted to research was the 25 years of history of this church community supporting gay and lesbian couples.

00:21:51.700 - 00:22:08.780

And to let the congregation reflect on what this had done to them and for them. And so I did some empirical research, and the congregation took part in that. They were the people who did the interviews. They chose the people who were to be interviewed.

00:22:09.560 - 00:22:33.880

And out of that empirical research, I put together my thesis, which then became the book that was published by Dartmouth, Longman and Todd in 2001, called Unheard Voices. And it was called Unheard Voices deliberately, because we wanted to hear the voices of the people of the community and the congregation, rather than the voices of the clergy.

00:22:33.880 - 00:23:02.300

The one thing I wanted to do was to deflect the accusation that this was the pet baby of one rather eccentric priest. Which was an easy accusation to make of my predecessor, because not other people had been involved. But I was fairly determined that we were going to spread this wide. And when we'd done that, I handed the thesis over to a liturgical group that I convened at the church.

00:23:02.300 - 00:23:24.540

And I said, I would like you, based upon the insights and the findings of this research, to produce a liturgy that reflects that. And they did. And that was a liturgy in which they then presented to the parochial church council, which was received by the church council, who then, at the end of that time, formulated an official policy.

00:23:24.540 - 00:24:13.880

And that policy stayed in place as it was until the government produced legislation for civil partnership rights. And at that point, the PCC reviewed its previous policy and agreed that what we had been looking for in our 30-year campaign by then, was equal rights for those in same-sex partnerships to have the kind of safeguards and legal infrastructure that everybody else had. And once civil partnerships came on the scene, the PCC then altered its resolution to say that they would only do services of blessing for those who had been through a civil partnership.

00:24:15.040 - 00:24:32.360

And what was interesting, Jeremy, was that we did ourselves out of a job. Because by the time civil partnerships came in, by and large, people stopped coming to us. Really? Unless they were committed Christians who wanted to do something in church.

00:24:32.520 - 00:24:51.940

Yes. By and large, they didn't come to us. So you've got a small number of people thereafter who were Christians and who wanted something in church as an extra plus, as it were, for whatever situation. Generally speaking, they would be people whose vicars were sympathetic to who they were and how they were as a couple,

00:24:52.300 - 00:25:22.980

but were a bit nervous about doing something liturgically for them in their own church. Tell me a bit about how this process was viewed from the context of the diocese, the perspective of the diocese. How did you negotiate all that? My predecessor had, I think as part of, I don't know whether it was part of his campaign, but he had always notified the bishop every time a couple had come to him.

00:25:24.080 - 00:25:55.920

I thought this was really rather unnecessary myself. You never tell bishops what they really want to hear. I thought really that here was a congregation that had now taken responsibility for itself. The only time it proved to be problematic was at the time when Geoffrey John had received the Queen's mandate to be made Bishop of Reading,

00:25:56.300 - 00:26:25.620

but was then persuaded to step aside. At that particular point, I was called to have a conversation with my bishop about what was going on. I went armed with a copy of the book and I had a good hour with him. He just said to me, the Archbishop of Canterbury has drawn a line in the sand and you're on the wrong side.

00:26:27.000 - 00:26:48.080

You're up for a curate this year, but I don't think I can send you one unless you get on the right side of this line. Short face for an interviewer. His chaplain was lovely and said, Bishop, you do realise there are any number of factors that actually go towards appointing a curate. One of those is housing and they've got a house.

00:26:51.300 - 00:27:30.260

The reality was that we were able to draft him a letter. I and the church wardens were able to draft him a letter in which we were able to reassure him that nothing would be done that would cause embarrassment to him as diocesan bishop and yet would maintain the integrity of the ministry in the parish. About this time, I remember getting interviewed on Ed Sturton's show on Sunday morning.

00:27:30.900 - 00:27:55.460

The interviewer was asking me about this and me saying, I'm loyal to my bishop. And I was, I was loyal to my bishop. I was very fond of him and I would not have done anything that would have been deliberately embarrassing to him. But I said to them on the radio, these people have been doing this for 30 years and I'm not about to stab them in the back now.

00:27:56.960 - 00:28:05.680

And Ed Sturton said, it's more or less good for you. Or worse that effect. Or worse that effect in a BBC kind of way. In a BBC kind of way.

00:28:05.680 - 00:28:17.360

You've done another book on gay and lesbian clergy. Yeah. Geoff, tell me a bit about that and how that came about. Well, Face to Face was really, it wasn't quite the sequel.

00:28:17.980 - 00:28:41.640

But what inspired it really was what happened to Geoffrey, Geoffrey John. I was very angry with what had happened there. And I thought, well, after Lambeth in 1988, which was, you know, on issues in human sexuality was just a disaster, really. 88 or 98?

00:28:41.840 - 00:28:52.640

I meant 98. 98, Lambeth won 10 and all that. Absolutely. And the exorcism of Richard Kirker by the Bishop of Engaddy or whatever it was.

00:28:54.000 - 00:29:24.860

After all of that I was, you know, given that they'd gone out of their way thereafter to say they would listen to gay and lesbian voices, I just thought, well, how are they going to do that? You know, because every gay and lesbian person is probably too scared to give voice to what they really think or feel. So I thought, well, what I'll do is, we all know that, and particularly in the capital, there are any number of clergy who are in relationships.

00:29:25.220 - 00:29:52.640

Let's find out a bit about them. And so, having been invited to the clergy consultation, which is a specially confidentially convened meeting of gay and lesbian clergy who wanted to gather together for this, I was asked to speak at it. And I have to say, it was one of the most moving experiences I've ever had.

00:29:52.640 - 00:30:44.600

I cast my eye around the room at over 100 men and women, many of whom I'd known for years but hadn't got the foggiest idea about their personal life. And out of that, I made an appeal, and I asked whether any of them would volunteer to be interviewed as couples. And many of them did, and I gathered together over 30 hours of interview material, which formed the basis of Face to Face. And the title Face to Face came about, as you'll see in the prologue, because it struck me that one of the things that had been missing was any kind of meaningful face-to-face dialogue

00:30:44.600 - 00:31:07.000

between those who were advocating policy and those who were the recipients of it. And this, I thought, would be a safe way of enabling that to happen. It's really a book about listening, Jeremy, and how you listen to people, and how you move on from the whole business of us and them. There are two sides to this story.

00:31:07.300 - 00:31:33.280

Well, what I discovered is that actually there were not two sides to this story. There were at least three. There's your story, there's my story, and there's what your story does to me, and mine to you, and the way in which I perceive it. And I discovered many things in researching that book, and I had enormous admiration for the couples that I met,

00:31:34.440 - 00:32:03.340

none of whom wanted to get out of their prams, none of whom wanted to shout and rage, but all of whom just wanted to be taken seriously. And what I discovered was that there was an inequality in the way in which they were treated, that the men, when they went to meet their bishops, were often asked the question, as indeed I was when I was newly ordained. The question being?

00:32:04.040 - 00:32:10.920

Do you prefer men or women? Yeah. Well, that was the question that was asked to me just before I was ordained. Fairly blunt.

00:32:11.260 - 00:32:30.520

Yeah, well, you know, there's no getting around that, really, isn't there? So the men were asked that question, the women weren't? And I asked them, you know, has your bishop asked you about your sexuality? And to a woman, they said, no, it never cropped up.

00:32:30.520 - 00:32:44.460

And I asked them, why do you think that is? And one of them said, I think it's because he just thinks the right man hasn't come along yet. Right. And I think there was that, there is that supposition, there is that supposition.

00:32:44.760 - 00:33:03.440

And part of that is down to stereotyping, which I think we've seen the end of now. But in the, you know, in the 70s and 80s, you know, your stereotypical homosexual man was along the lines of... Larry Grayson. Larry Grayson or...

00:33:04.500 - 00:33:08.220

Are you being served? Yeah, that's, you know who I'm talking about. John Humphreys. Yes, yeah.

00:33:08.960 - 00:33:25.700

Yeah, effeminate gay cowboy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, and of course, they don't really know how to place women in that bracket, you know, unless, unless they want to dress them in sort of earth tones and hushpuppets and short haircuts.

00:33:25.860 - 00:33:48.060

You know, it's, it's all very stereotypical and, and obscene, frankly. And so it was really quite an enlightening thing. And I'm glad the book happened because it's, it's, it's sold very well. It's, it's a pretty serious piece of listening, isn't it?

00:33:48.060 - 00:34:05.380

I, that's what I wanted it to be. And I wanted it to be so in the wake of what I thought had been quite serious non-listening at that time. I don't know whether the book has had much effect. I've met people who have read it.

00:34:05.840 - 00:34:18.280

I have received a reasonable size postbag from people who have said, thank you for doing it. You know, it needed to be said. Do you have any green ink? No, I haven't.

00:34:18.640 - 00:34:28.500

I, I've, I've. In fact, have you had much green ink over the course of your ministry? With regard to this? In relation to your support.

00:34:28.580 - 00:34:38.880

Not at all. Not at all. Not at all. And I think that's because I, how can I say this without sounding, I mean, this is going to be heard by people who just don't know me.

00:34:38.880 - 00:35:00.740

I think that if you're a clergyman who, who wears a deerstalker and an anorak and does this kind of ministry, then you're likely to be typecast as just a weirdo. Yeah. And eccentric. I always wear a smart suit and polish my shoes.

00:35:01.380 - 00:35:04.660

You do always. I do. I do. Even your brown ones.

00:35:04.700 - 00:35:16.980

Even my brown ones, yes. Yeah. Because I think that style matters. And I remember, I remember reading about one of my, one of my great heroes, as you know, is George Formby.

00:35:19.080 - 00:35:41.880

And I remember George Formby, I remember reading about George Formby being interviewed by Eddie Latta, who wrote some of his songs, who went on to be an undertaker. And Eddie Latta said to him, you know, what was the big change? And he said, well, the big change, he said, was when my wife pulled me out of the theatre and stopped me wearing a cloth cap and clogs. And she dressed me in a smart suit.

00:35:42.300 - 00:36:02.500

She said, if you're going to sing dirty songs, then you need to, if you're going to sing them wearing clogs and a cloth cap, people are going to think you're a dirty person. Yeah. Whereas if you dress up smart, double-breasted suit, brook-reamed hair, they don't know how to place you. Now, that's not quite the advice that I gave to myself at the time.

00:36:02.620 - 00:36:39.140

I just like dressing smart. But I do think that actually, if you appear in normality, then what you do can have a semblance of normalcy about it as well. And really, all that we were trying to do in my time at St Luke's, and all that I've tried to do in writing these two books, has been to indicate that the world's not going to come to an end just because you're a gay person. And you happen to love another gay person.

00:36:40.780 - 00:36:58.080

You know, that's just it. And I think, I really do think, although it's taken a long time, I think we have moved on a hell of a long way from 1975. Do you think so? Yeah. I do. I do. You and I wouldn't be having this kind of conversation.

00:36:58.640 - 00:37:08.240

No, we wouldn't. And we wouldn't have had the other conversations. We wouldn't have had the other conversations either. No, that's true. How do you feel about it when you look back at it all?

00:37:08.420 - 00:37:47.140

I mean, how do you feel about all that's taken place, and where we are, and where are we going, what's going to happen? Well, I think that when I reflect on it now, the thing that really strikes me most of all is just how awed the young people were in my congregation when they were interviewed about all of this. Simply because, as teenagers, they, to a boy and girl, knew people at school who were gay. So, sexual orientation is something that was actually much more openly spoken about, talked about in school at a younger age.

00:37:47.180 - 00:37:55.960

And that wasn't the case for you and me. You know, sex education was not done by school. It was done by your parents. And in my case, it was not done by my parents.

00:37:56.820 - 00:38:21.780

So, there is that. So, there is a sense in which I think it's, to some extent, for my children, it's all a bit of a joke. And I have this conversation with my wife now, where I say, when I die, the thing that I hope happens is that when they come to clear out my books, my children look at these and they say, look, do you remember the old man did this?

00:38:22.260 - 00:38:41.620

What on earth was going on in those days? And I think that with another generation, that's where we will be. It may not happen in my lifetime, but I think it will happen in another generation. Do you think the Church is listening better as a whole?

00:38:43.920 - 00:38:51.940

It depends what you mean by the Church. If you mean the Church worldwide. No, I mean the Church of England. I think, my experience of it is that it is.

00:38:54.320 - 00:39:34.900

And what we're learning is that, I think that what we're learning is that the voices that belong to people who have not got the ears to hear are getting fewer. Yes. And I find this most interestingly amongst some of my evangelical friends, because I have hitherto always felt that actually, if you can be oversimplistic, that gay orientation went with Anglo-Catholicism. Yes.

00:39:34.960 - 00:39:41.480

It's to do with dressing up. Historically. Dressing up and pretty things and all that sort of stuff. Whereas the reality is that that's not the case.

00:39:41.760 - 00:40:06.060

No, absolutely. And I think that what I'm discovering pleasurably now is that evangelicals are entering meaningfully into some kind of discourse of their own. And there are various opinions held even amongst evangelical congregations. Oh yes, that's right.

00:40:06.060 - 00:40:20.120

And particularly amongst younger people. I mean, when was the last time you heard anybody talk about loving the sinner and hating the sin? I haven't heard it for years. It's certainly not the line that was trotted out.

00:40:20.160 - 00:40:28.760

It was an 80s and 90s type thing. But I don't hear that anymore. So, I'm pleasantly optimistic. And I have to be.

00:40:28.880 - 00:40:38.340

I mean, I'm the eternal optimist. I couldn't live. Well, I mean, your work around is preparing a church for the future in some sense. So, you have to be optimistic.

00:40:38.340 - 00:40:56.020

In some respects, yes. That is always the case. And, you know, interestingly, that was the case when I was in parish ministry. We had a significant number of people who felt a call to one kind of ministry or another.

00:40:56.620 - 00:41:16.340

A significant number. And many of them had wound up at St Luke's Charter because of its stance on justice and faith issues, which included the gay issue. Broader than that. Much broader than that.

00:41:16.600 - 00:41:33.660

I mean, that was the other thing that came out of the first piece of research was that I discovered that there were several issues that had actually united the congregation. I mean, part of the research was, what brings this group of people together in this church? And there's a brilliant book by James Hopewell. It's not quite old now, called Congregations.

00:41:34.920 - 00:41:58.700

And Hopewell's theory essentially was that it was about storytelling. That actually what you did was you found yourself joining a church where the church's story resonated with your own. So, I would go to St Luke's and I discovered there were 20% people who had come from Africa and they were there because they got a welcome. Yes.

00:41:59.820 - 00:42:13.040

There was another group of people there who were divorced or remarried or who had illegitimate children or they had children and were not married. Yes. And they were there because they got a welcome. Yes.

00:42:13.040 - 00:42:24.020

And there were gay couples who were there because they got a welcome. Right. So, there was a sense in which Hopewell's theory was absolutely true. And, you know, there's me.

00:42:24.840 - 00:42:31.280

You know, I don't stand in any of these things at this particular point of my time. You know, I am married. I'm heterosexual. I've got children.

00:42:31.580 - 00:42:35.820

Yeah. And. Your privileges are dripping off you. Absolutely right.

00:42:35.940 - 00:42:43.200

Yeah. And I wear smart suits. Yeah. And I'm in that place because that story resonates with me.

00:42:43.800 - 00:43:01.580

And one of the reasons why it resonates with me is because my story as somebody discovering their vocation and being ordained is one of someone from a poor background. You know, my parents were working class. I'm not working class. I've got an education.

00:43:01.860 - 00:43:14.180

You know, I have three degrees. Yeah. You know, I can't count myself as working class, but they were. They were working class and they knew that education will be the way forward, but they didn't know how to make it work for me.

00:43:14.740 - 00:43:21.680

So, there's a kind of part of my story. Yes. Which I now found myself in that church congregation. Yeah.

00:43:22.380 - 00:43:28.260

Living out again. Right. And. So, basically, you were welcomed and nurtured.

00:43:28.320 - 00:43:42.080

Yeah. Yeah. I can remember that there was a lovely couple at my church called Wally and Edna. And Wally and Edna, I met them outside the church door while I was waiting for a hearse to arrive.

00:43:42.420 - 00:43:51.440

Yeah. And they looked at me and I said, good afternoon. And they said, good afternoon. And they went home.

00:43:52.100 - 00:44:07.160

And they came to church. And a couple of years later, I said to Edna, I said, no, I said to Wally, I said, what brought you to St Luke's? He said, oh, you did. He said, Edna and me were just doing our shopping and we're walking past you outside the church.

00:44:07.200 - 00:44:17.560

And you said, good morning to us and good afternoon to us. And we got home and Edna said, yeah, he seems like a nice chap. I think we'll go round there. And that was it.

00:44:17.620 - 00:44:20.700

And that was it. That was mission. That's it. That was mission.

00:44:20.840 - 00:44:30.340

It was actually being prepared to welcome people. That's what that book's about. It's about saying, please welcome people as they are. Right.

00:44:30.520 - 00:44:39.160

Please welcome people as they are. Isn't that what church is about? For me, it's Mary's fiat. Yes.

00:44:39.540 - 00:44:49.880

It's that he's taken the mighty from their seat and exalted the humble and meek. Yeah. You know, the have nots have. Yeah.

00:44:50.320 - 00:45:02.420

And the haves have not. Yeah. It's the values of the world turned upside down. And, you know, I think that what I would want to say is, don't be afraid to live that out.

00:45:03.960 - 00:45:18.040

Thank you, Geoff. Is there anything I should have asked you? Um, no, but I think, you know, it's important that you say that I'm not being paid. You're not being paid.

00:45:18.040 - 00:45:24.960

Let me just check. Anything else? No. I think we're done. Okay.

00:45:25.000 - 00:45:26.280

Thank you very much indeed. Pleasure.