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Hi, this is Carol Sheppard of LGCM interviewing for the Oral History Project. I'm here today with Liz Stewart. Liz, can I just confirm it's Liz, not Elizabeth? You can call me Liz, yes. My name's Elizabeth, but you can call me Liz, yes. Okay. Smashing. Could you tell me a little bit about yourself, maybe growing up, when,

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where, siblings, that kind of thing? Okay. I was born in Kent and brought up in Gravesend in Kent. My mother was a housewife and my father was a Trinity House pilot, and I have one sister who is 16 years older than I am. My father was an Anglican, my mother was a Roman Catholic, so we were brought up

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Roman Catholics. Okay. Why did Roman Catholic take precedence? Because that church teaching, if you had what in those days was called a mixed marriage, then the non-Catholic had to promise to bring up any children in the Roman Catholic faith.

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Okay, thank you. And would you say you grew up with a Christian faith? Yes, yes. It was just really part of me. I was part of probably the last generation to grow up in a sort of pre-Vatican II Catholicism. It was a very cultural Catholicism, a very colourful Catholicism, bells and smells and processions and different colours for

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different times of the year. I went to a Roman Catholic prep school run by nuns. It was just part of who I was and it was incredibly important to me. My parents, I suppose because it was a mixed marriage, they took faith seriously but they didn't take it too seriously, if you get my drift. It was never oppressive. I can honestly say I never found religion,

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my religion, oppressive in any way whatsoever. Whilst you were growing up? Whilst I was growing up. When I was 11 I was confirmed and in those days, I don't know if they still do it, but in those days in the Catholic Church you chose a new name when

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you were confirmed and I wanted to choose the name Augustine. And this caused a bit of a to-do because I think it was unprecedented for a girl to choose a man's name. And I had to go all the way up to the bishop to be approved, but they did approve it. And I knew I, even in those days, I wanted to be a theologian. I was only 11 but I knew

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that's what I wanted to do, which is why I chose a name. Okay, so it was Augustine as in Augustine theologian? Yes, of Hitler, yes, yes. You were born in August or wanted a boy's name?

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No, no, no, no, I wanted that. And yes, so I never found it oppressive. I wasn't burdened with Catholic guilt. You know, some people talk about Catholic guilt. I never experienced that. My religion was always a joy to me and a strength to me and a huge part of who I was.

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And this was in Kent? Yes. Whereabouts? Gravesend.

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Gravesend, that's right, you said that. And school was in? Yes, I went to two Catholic schools and then when I was 13, I went to a non-religious Gram school. Okay, and how was that in comparison?

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Well, it was strange having been in two schools that had religion at their heart to be in one that didn't have religion at its heart. But nevertheless, the good thing about it was that it had a very strong RE department and I was able to study RE academically at O-level and then A-level and that was a great joy to me and then I went on and studied it

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at university. Okay. When were you aware of having a sexual identity and what your sexual identity was? Hard to pinpoint that, I suppose. Teenage, I suppose. 13, 14, something like that. Didn't cause me any problems whatsoever. I never considered the possibility it might be wrong

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or sinful or... And was it talked about at church? Was there any...? No, no. So it's not that you heard a message from the front that led you...?

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No, I mean, no. I mean, insofar as people talked about it at all, which generally speaking they didn't, it would have been talked about in negative ways. But it seemed to me that what my faith taught me was that Christianity was about love, it was about inclusion, and it was about not behaving in ways expected of society. So, you know. I think the good

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thing about Catholicism is that, and I know this is looking back on it now, I wouldn't have been able to articulate this at the time, but it is quite queer in the sense that, you know, you have priests dressed in odd ways and you call these male celibate people father and I was used to calling female celibate people mother and sister, you know, and these

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people were regarded as being certainly holy people and that they weren't part of families in the traditional sense of the term. You weren't just presented with a sort of nuclear family as the ideal or other models. And I think it's that that influenced me more than any sort of societal or indeed ecclesiastical condemnation of homosexuality. I mean, in

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those days people just didn't talk about it. It's not that you heard condemnations, it's just that... Silence. Yeah, silence. And you kind of knew instinctively not to bring it up.

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Okay. And did you identify as lesbian or bisexual or...? I'm not sure I would have put a label on it to start off with, but certainly by the time I became an adult I would have identified as lesbian, yeah. Okay. So we've talked about you growing up and school and your feeling at ease within

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the Catholic Church. You went on to university, which was...? Oxford. Oxford. Which college were you at? I was at two colleges. I did my undergraduate at Jesus College and then I did my doctorate

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at St Hugh's College. Okay. And how was that? How was the Oxford experience? Well, I loved Oxford. I absolutely adored Oxford, mainly because I was able to just do theology, which was the great passion of my life. By the time I got to Oxford, things were changing

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in society as a whole. I think people were beginning to talk more about sexuality. What year was that, roughly? Early 80s. Early 80s.

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Yeah. And there were societies for gay people at Oxford and it was generally more visible, I suppose. And there were various things going on in society as a whole to make lesbian and gay people more visible. So Oxford was a place of freedom, a place where you could certainly be yourself. There wasn't any problem with that.

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And were you in relationships at that time? Yes. With women? Yes.

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Okay. And would you say you were openly gay at university or did you still have to watch your step a bit? How was it? You couldn't be as open as you can be now, that's for sure. But it wasn't a completely closeted existence either. I suppose it was known amongst friends, but it's not something

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that you would have... it's not something you would have brought up with your tutors or anything like that. I'm not sure how sympathetic the university as a whole would have been to those sort of issues at all. But it wasn't oppressive, but it wasn't a completely open environment either.

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Okay. You said that there were more and more gay and lesbian groups and organisations. Yes. And I believe you were quite heavily involved with LGCM. Yes, I became so, yeah. Really heavily involved, yeah.

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When was that? That was around 1988. Right, okay. So the Section 28 era, around about then. What were you involved in prior to that? Were you involved in other groups or organisations?

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Quest, the Roman Catholic group I was involved with. I was very busy doing my doctorate. I didn't get involved in groups before I'd finished my doctorate. But I was very aware of things going on. I was very aware of LGCM being thrown out as some bot-offs. It was a horrible, horrible time to be gay at that time. You had the beginnings of the AIDS crisis

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and that brought out rampant homophobia, really frightening levels of homophobia. Yeah. And you had Section 28 and all that agenda going on. It was horrible, horrible. Young people today wouldn't believe how horrible it was. And once I finished my doctorate and

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started teaching, I wanted to get involved. At that time, I was having to teach liberation theology and became very interested in liberation theology. And through that, became convinced that it's important to do something. It's important to stand up. And if God is on the side of the oppressed, then it's important to say that.

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Yeah. And to take any risks you have to take to witness to that fact. So that's why I became very heavily involved in LGCM. Going back to that you got involved with Quest, obviously growing up you didn't feel

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that there was any sense of conflict between your Catholic faith and your sexuality. I guess by virtue of being involved with Quest, you were now aware that there was a conflict between the church. Well, yes. Yes, obviously. The Catholic Church started making statements that were very

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negative. What prompted that? I'm a bit ignorant about Catholic church history. Well, in the late 70s, I think, you'll have to forgive me because my memory's not that good and I'm sort of out of it a bit. But in the late 70s, the Catholic Church had made

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an official statement about homosexuality, which was, it wasn't entirely positive, but it wasn't entirely negative either. But then in the 80s, it became really negative and you know, intrinsic disorder and all that kind of language. And then the AIDS crisis.

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And then the AIDS crisis didn't help. Could you just give me a little bit more on your experience of living as an adult through the AIDS crisis? Because I was 17 and I can't, I just remember the horrible adverts. Okay. The best analogy I can give you is, well, and I've never lived through a war as

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it were, but I imagine it was like living through a war in that you would see somebody one week and they'd be dead the next. Gosh, okay. And they were friends of yours? Yeah, I lost a lot of friends. And, you know, again, a bit of a war analogy I think is

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appropriate, is these were often young men, beautiful young men, lovely young men, taken in the prime of their lives. I mean, it was tragic at all kinds of levels, you know. I knew somebody who worked with people who were dying and said that often, you know,

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people weren't getting food in hospitals and so on because the trays of food were left outside the door because people were too frightened to go near. In the early days it was horrendous and people were too ill to get out of bed to go and get the food, so they just weren't getting food.

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I was friends with a woman called Jean White who was pastor of a metropolitan community church in London, fantastic woman. And in the very early days it could be hard to get undertakers to take the bodies of those who died. And she used to triple bag bodies on her dining room table.

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Really? And take them to the crematorium herself. My goodness. In the very early days.

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In her own car sort of thing. Yeah, yeah. There was huge amounts of fear initially, I mean the fear continued, but you can't underestimate, or overestimate rather, the huge amounts of fear to begin with because

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nobody was quite sure what was causing it, what was happening and so on and so forth. And people just died before your eyes. And it was horrible. And I have to say that the people who were most impressive in many ways during that time was the Salvation Army, not known for their particularly enlightened views on homosexuality,

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but they took a decision that this wasn't a time to make moral judgements, this was a time to be with people who needed them. Okay. So a lot of the first funerals were taken by Salvation Army officers because they were

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the people who do them. Okay. And they were the people who visit the wards. And they don't get the credit they deserve for that I think.

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Yeah. There was particularly a chap in London called Captain Trevor something, can't remember his second name, Smith, Smith I think, who was absolutely terrific at caring for people who were dying. So it was grim, it was really, really grim. But the positive thing about

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it was that I think a lot of people were very impressed by the way that partners cared for their loved ones. And in a way that did change a lot of minds about gay couples. So there was some positivity that came out of it. Did you find positivity within the church? What was your experience of let's say believers

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and then maybe the general public's attitude towards HIV and AIDS? I think it was variable amongst both groups of people. I was involved in setting up a dropping centre for people with HIV in Plymouth, which I looked up the other day, it's still going actually, called the Edison Centre. It's now called the Edison Trust. And the

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initial group of people that were involved in founding that included a vicar. And so there was fantastic work done by people like Father Bill Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lynch in New York, and so on. So it was varied I think. On the one hand you had some Christian people who were just throwing themselves into it to help and were fantastic. And on the other

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hand you had people who were exploiting it in a way as a sign of God's judgement or whatever. Yeah, I had a conversation like that with my mother. It was clearly the wrath of God that all lesbians aren't having penetrative sex. And then that Section 28, the AIDS crisis prompted you and your Liberation Theology teaching that it wasn't enough to sit back,

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you needed to get involved and that prompted you joining LGCM. Was that still GCM at that time? Yeah, it was LGCM. Tell me about your experiences there. Oh, I thought it was wonderful. I still think it's wonderful. Was that the Richard Kirker era? Yeah, and he was a force of nature, was Richard, that's for sure. A bit of a Marmite sort of character, you either

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loved him or hated him, and I loved him. It was just a wonderful thing, LGCM. It was a safe space, it provided great pastoral support for people, and most importantly of all it was a campaigning organisation, it was out to change things. And Richard very quickly got me involved in, I suppose, theological projects. There was very little theology

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done by then, by gay people, about gay people, and Richard saw that there was a need for this and very quickly got me involved and indeed got me writing commissions and so on. So, formats that that took, writing, also did you do... I did a lot of speaking, yeah. And what would be the subjects of your talks, for example? I mean, what would the title

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be? Well, just a lot of stuff on, I suppose, doing theology from the basis of lesbian and gay experience, as opposed to doing theology from the perspective of heterosexual experience and what that would mean. And crucially, the crucial thing that Richard did was get me the contract to write Daring to Speak Love's Name. That's your prayer book you wrote, wasn't

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it? Yeah, I've read about that. And what year was that? That was 1990 that he got me the contract, I think. And so SPCK commissioned me to write that and it was about to go to print when the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, George Carey, who was the chair, I think, of SPCK, he was certainly on the board, ordered that it be stopped from publication.

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And had he actually seen it? I don't think so, no. And I think that they just expected me to take that, you know, okay, fine. And I was not going to take that. I mean, that struck me as outrageous. You know, it wasn't a great tome advocating this, that or the other. It was a prayer book, you know. And so I, you know, I fought against it, or at

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least I exposed what was happening. And that caused a huge wave of publicity. Okay. What extent was the publicity? I think I was in every newspaper, every British newspaper, I was on the news, I was on various documentary shows and things like that, you know. I can't tell you how much it was huge. What sort of headlines did they write?

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Oh, Archbishop Bann's book, you know, that kind of thing. And I think it was quite important because I think lots of people who previously hadn't been associated with being, as it were, pro-gay came out in support of the book because, you know, it is an outrage to stop a prayer book being published. Yeah, it was presumably not going to be pornographic in any way.

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It was just a prayer book. Okay. And, you know, the idea of gay people doing things for gay people, I mean, the idea became established, I think. And eventually it was published by Penguin, which I was very grateful for, and sold out very quickly. But... It was in 92. Okay. And as part of the launch, we had a launch in Westminster Hall, a Methodist

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place. Yeah. Which, again, that caused a lot of controversy because as part of it we did a blessing of couples. Okay. And they were going to pull out of that, Westminster Hall were going to pull out. Yeah. But we managed to, we managed it. But it was huge, it was absolutely huge. Were you famous really? Yes, I was. People would stop me on the street

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and things like that, and write me hate letters. So that defines what it means to be famous, yes. Or publicity and all that. Well, it was quite hard to bear, but yes, it was a big news. Yeah. I'll tell you how big it was. You know the programme Have I Got News For You? Yeah, yeah. And they have in the back... Background, yeah, sort of headlines and pictures.

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Yeah, I was one of those headlines for ages. Oh, were you? I think people aspire to that. Yeah. So yes, so yeah. Was it the Daily Mail? I can't remember the story. It might have been the News of the World or something like that. But yes, so that really started for me a career as a lesbian theologian, I suppose. Yeah. And I got lots of book contracts on

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the back of that, I suppose. No, you wrote just Good Friends. I've written ten books, yeah, yeah. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? I've read some of them. I've read the queer religion one. Yeah, that turned out really useful for my doctorate studies. So, yes, so all my books really are about trying to do theology from the basis of lesbian

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and gay experience. And then I shifted my own position slightly to a more queer stance because I suppose I came to distrust a bit identity politics and the whole notion of a stable identity. And so moved to a more queer perspective that actually gender and sexuality is not stable and that actually that's a good thing. And that actually what

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Christianity offers is a vision of a community in which gender and sexuality has no status at all. And that seems to me to be really liberating. So, yes, I think I got to that position by the time I stopped writing on these issues in a major way. But yes, I suppose I was right at the beginning of the emergence of lesbian and gay theology and queer theology

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and that was really exciting and really interesting to be involved in. Did that impact on your relationships, family? No, no, not at all. I think my family were always slightly perplexed as to what I was up to, but there was never any question of them not supporting me or whatever. I suppose

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a couple of times I've become quite near to being sacked over it in the early days because, of course, in those days there was no protection under the law. It was quite legitimate to sack somebody for being gay. And I had a couple of close shaves, but lots of support as well. But no, not in terms of my family at all. My parents both served

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in the war. My father was an able officer and my mother as an ambulance driver. And I think they had a strong sense that they fought for freedom. And even if they might disagree with what you were doing, they still felt you had a right to do it. So I was very lucky in that regard, I have to say.

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Okay, yeah, that's really good. LGCM, you became heavily involved because Richard could see what you could offer. You became a trustee, didn't you? Yes, I was for a while, yeah. What was that like?

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It was always quite tense. Partly because there was never enough money. There was quite a lot of money in those days, but because we were employing Richard, there was always tension over whether we'd have enough money to pay him. There was always quite a strong voice in the membership that was arguing that we couldn't afford a full-time employee.

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And so periodically there would be this massive sort of row about whether we should make Richard redundant or not. There was always some tensions over the direction of LGCM. Some people thought it was too militant. Some people thought it wasn't militant enough. Some people thought it was too Anglican.

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And where were you? I thought it was too Anglican. I thought Richard was worth every penny and more, actually. I didn't think it was militant at all. But I did think it was too Anglican. There were huge debates going on in the Methodist Church and the URC Church. And of course in the

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Roman Catholic Church, things were just getting worse and worse and worse. And though there were caucuses for all those things that did terrific amounts of work, the sort of major resources, which I suppose was Richard, weren't focused on any of those things, just focused on the Church of England. Now there were horrendous things going on in the Church of

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England as well, of course, but I did sometimes think more attention should have been given to the other areas. So it was hard to get Richard to go to a press conference that involved another church, for example, that kind of thing. Right. Was someone else sent, or did it just not happen?

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Well, the person leading the relevant caucus would go, I suppose. But I remember having a row with him about something to do with the Catholic Church. I had to make him go. But it was always quite tense. We set up the Institute, as it was then, for the study of sexuality, Christianity and sexuality.

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Yeah. And there was some tension around that because I think some people thought that it had been set up to be the charitable arm of LGCM, whereas other people thought that it had a stronger independent identity. So there was always tension around that, which eventually led

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to it becoming a completely separate organisation. So it was disputatious, always. Yeah. Was there friction between gay men and lesbian women, or not really? What was the ratios and things like that? Well, LGCM was pretty heavily male, but there were more women involved in LGCM than in other

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lesbian and gay groups I'd been involved in. No, I wouldn't have said there was tension, no. Not that I can remember particularly, no. And was it exclusively lesbian and gay at that time, or was there a bisexual contingent? No, there was some bisexual people, absolutely.

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Male and female identified? Yeah. In fact, some of the most long-standing members, when I joined, were bisexual or identified as bisexual. Okay. And did they feel that their voices were heard?

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I don't know. It wasn't until quite later on, for example, that there was a clear bisexual presence at a conference with a bisexual group meeting. I think it would be fair to say that during the 80s and 90s there wasn't much attention given to bisexuality as a sort of separate thing.

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Yeah, yeah. Okay. So how long were you involved with LGCM? Well, I'm still a member, but became less sort of centrally involved, I suppose, from the beginning of the 2000s. Okay. Was that work commitments or just...?

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Lots of different things. It's hard to keep up that level of energy. Yeah. And yes, my work was changing and, yeah, it was just harder to give that amount of time. Okay.

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But I'd never, ever ceased to be a member. It's been too important in my life and, you know, I owe it a lot and I believe passionately in it, so I've never, ever ceased to be a member. Yeah. That's fantastic. Obviously, there's been a lot of changes in LGCM and we've relocated out of London. What are your thoughts about having a presence in London or do you have

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any thoughts around that or it doesn't really affect you or...? I suppose... I think the difficulty for LGCM is that... When I was most heavily involved in it, things were bad. Yeah.

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Things were really bad. They were bad in the churches and they were bad in society. Yeah. And I cannot believe how things have changed in society, you know? I cannot believe it. If you'd told me in 1986 or 7 that, you know, by 2015 we'd have gay marriage in this country,

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I'd have laughed at you. I couldn't... You couldn't... You couldn't believe it. Just couldn't believe it. But things have changed in society as a whole. Yeah.

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And beyond my comprehension, really, things are still difficult in the churches, but churches are affected by society, no doubt. So the battles aren't as clear. Yeah. Now, occasionally there are clear battles, like the Jeremy... What's his name?

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Pemberton. Pemberton, yeah. That's a clear battle. Yeah. But, you know, the churches, even the Roman Catholic Church now, it's gone sort of softer.

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And that's more difficult to fight. It's more difficult, you know, it's just not quite as clear what the battle lines are anymore. And I think the general view on the part of almost everybody would be that we're now in a sort of war of attrition with regards to the churches because the churches are just going to have to get with the program, you know. And, you

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know, eventually it'll just happen. And I think that that just makes LGCM's positioning difficult. And people are going to say, well, what's it for? Yeah. And what's the point of belonging to it? And so on and so forth.

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What's your take on, this is more of a personal interest, but I've been to a number of LGBT groups in London. And some of them, they're very lovely, but they would seem to be mimicking church services. And I personally don't want to go back to that kind of traditional way of doing church. And LGCM is still got that more activist campaigning side to it that

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the other groups don't seem to me to have. Yes, yes. There was a question in there somewhere. It depends what you want, doesn't it, really?

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I think that, you know, LGCM was set up to try and change things. So it should be, that's its core mission. It should continue to seek to try and change it. I think there is a place for other types of groups that provide church for people who otherwise wouldn't engage with church. But the reason why I loved LGCM was because it was active and it was unapologetic.

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I mean, it really was unapologetic and that was quite unusual in those days. And that's what got a lot of people's backs up, of course. But that's why I loved it. Yeah, yeah. I have a view that the church, the middle ground will go. It will be extreme fundamentalism or they'll just go with society. Do you think that it will be totally untenable

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fairly soon for the mainstream churches to carry on in that position where they are, where they, you know, love the sinner, don't quite like the sinner stuff? Yes, I do. I think that, you know, I think it's hard for the churches to resist what's going on in the wider society. From a theological perspective, you could say the Holy Spirit

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speaking to the wider society, trying to teach the church. Yeah, I think with Barack Obama and Jodie Foster coming out and all these things that are going on in the world. Britain doesn't have much of a tradition of extreme fundamentalism, Christian fundamentalism.

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There always will be some. But I think you can even, you know, even in the evangelical world, there's change on this whole matter. And I do think it's just a matter of time, really. What AIDS did teach me, though, is that things can change for the worse as well as for the better.

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Yeah. You know, pre the AIDS pandemic, you know, there was a period when things looked like they were getting better, and then AIDS came along and got a lot worse. So I think it's important not to take it all for granted. But, you know, it's just hard, if not impossible,

00:41:49.020 - 00:42:15.700

I would say, for the churches to continue to take some of the lines they have in the face of the reality of the lives of lesbian and gay people. So yes, I think everybody knows, really, it's only a matter of time. Do you think it might even come to full-on religious wars, maybe in the States, for example?

00:42:15.700 - 00:42:49.920

No. No, I don't think so. The States is a bit nuts when it comes to religion, but I don't think so. Because in the States, what people tend to value, the vast majority of people value more, is the secular, the fact that religion is not enshrined in the State. Even

00:42:49.920 - 00:43:04.820

somebody like Ronald Reagan, you know, really valued that. And I think most people, when push comes to shove, would want to uphold that rather than anything else. Okay, so freedom of speech, democracy. Yes, yes.

00:43:05.040 - 00:43:36.840

Yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm always struck about the gay marriage thing, that it feels to me that straight people within the church are okay with it, if it's gay marriage, where there's a commitment in the relationship, monogamous, etc. What do you think, this is a very difficult question, but I'm intrigued. What do you think the church is going to do

00:43:36.840 - 00:44:09.740

about trans and bi people? I think the whole transsexuality thing is the next big thing. Now, in the 90s, I was actually on a group, an official group in the Church of England that was looking at the whole issue of transsexuality. And I was quite struck about how everybody on that

00:44:09.740 - 00:44:35.160

group was reasonably sympathetic to the whole issue. I think myself that I just find it fascinating that all of a sudden, television programmes about, you know, lots of television programmes about transsexuality. I must have watched at least three in the past week, actually.

00:44:35.260 - 00:44:59.740

Lots about children. Yeah, lots about children. I've met, in the past month, I've met two people whose children have decided to transition gender and so on and so forth. I find that fascinating as a phenomenon. What causes that as a phenomenon? And I haven't got answers for that, but I'm

00:45:00.540 - 00:45:29.920

I also find it slightly depressing, I have to say, watching some of those television programmes. Because it seems to me that, and obviously, you know, I want to absolutely support people's life choices and etc. But it does seem to me that what lies behind a lot of this is very hard notions of gender that I would want to challenge.

00:45:30.440 - 00:45:46.980

Yeah. What it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. Yeah. I think that's the thing that always strikes me when they do show programmes about transsexuals, and especially with the children, they seem to go for the pink and the feathery

00:45:46.980 - 00:45:56.740

ones. Yes, indeed. And I'm thinking, I'm a cis-gendered female and I've never grown up wanting to be ultra-girly and there's something, yeah.

00:45:58.000 - 00:46:27.400

Yeah, that really strikes me. I think if Christianity has anything to preach on this, it is that gender is not real like that. Yeah, yeah. And, but, you know, it is becoming a cultural phenomenon, therefore theology is going to

00:46:27.400 - 00:46:47.680

have to respond and the church is going to have to respond. I suspect churches will respond quite sympathetically to myself. It's been my experience that if you can find medical or scientific reasons, generally I find that Christian fervent beliefs can get their head around that, but when it's

00:46:47.680 - 00:46:56.200

more fluid. Yes, yes. Yeah. Again, depressing. I mean, I don't take an essentialist view of homosexuality at all.

00:46:56.660 - 00:47:24.220

I don't believe in gay genes and the like. I want to work towards a world in which you fall in love with who you fall in love with and that people, you know, can feel the potential, at least that they have the possibility of falling in love with people of any gender. Yeah. So, I mean, going back to the whole identity politics thing, do you think there's

00:47:24.220 - 00:47:35.980

an inherent human need that most people have for some kind of closure, some kind of, right, that's who I am? Do you think that has anything? Yes, of course. Yeah.

00:47:36.380 - 00:47:53.700

Because it gives you a sense of where you are in the pecking order and your place in the world and so on and so forth. Yeah. But that, you know, St Paul, in Christ there is no male or female, male and female, slave

00:47:53.700 - 00:48:09.760

or free, no Jew or Greek. Well they were the clear identity politics of the day. Yeah. And he's saying, look, that doesn't exist in the church and it strikes me that that's the really radical message actually.

00:48:10.220 - 00:48:21.580

Yeah. And we've got to be careful about just buying into the identity politics of a particular era. Okay.

00:48:25.880 - 00:48:52.360

So, you know, when my mother was growing up in Liverpool, you know, there were very clear identity politics around Catholic and Protestant and that determined whether it was safe to go out on a particular day or not. Now we've moved beyond that in this country and my hope is that we can move in a similar

00:48:52.360 - 00:49:12.000

way in terms of gender and sexual identity politics. Yeah. Okay. So somebody saying, I was brought up a Catholic but I've become a Protestant, well, nobody would bat an eyelid. Doesn't matter. Actually lots of people would refuse to identify in

00:49:12.000 - 00:49:23.740

that way now. Yeah. And, you know, it strikes me that that's what we should be aiming for. And would you say that's reflected in your academic work?

00:49:24.080 - 00:49:26.740

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

00:49:27.820 - 00:49:48.080

So tell me a little bit about your work at Winchester. Obviously you're a Deputy Vice Chancellor. Yeah, so I came here in 98 as their first Professor of Theology and then in 2005 I became the Director of Research and in 2008 I became Deputy Vice Chancellor.

00:49:48.460 - 00:50:09.180

Okay. And what does that entail? Well, I'm the Deputy Head of the University so there are two of us and we're responsible for the operational management of the University. Okay. And is it a welcoming environment here for LGBT people?

00:50:09.180 - 00:50:17.900

Yeah, absolutely it is. Is there any conflict between the Christian heritage of the University? Well, there could be, but there isn't. Okay.

00:50:20.020 - 00:50:43.080

Because, luckily, the Vice Chancellor, the boss, and I are very like-minded on this, she is also a deeply committed Christian. And for both of us, being welcoming to people. Is that Joy? Yeah, because she came along to the Hampshire Pride and did the opening talk.

00:50:44.080 - 00:51:14.980

Being welcoming to people of LGBTI identity is an expression of our Christian heritage. Yeah. Is that written into any of the statutes of the University, being equality and diversity? It's written into lots of documents. But there's still, because we're a Church of England University, for example,

00:51:15.200 - 00:51:33.140

and because the current Bishop of Winchester takes a slightly different view, for example on the gay marriage thing, we can't have gay marriages in the chapel. Right, okay. Our Dean of Chapel would love to do them, but we can't do them at the moment.

00:51:33.620 - 00:51:53.740

Right, okay. But we have West Downs, which has a chapel that was deconsecrated, so we can use that. Okay. But, no, we fly the rainbow flag. We flew it for a week when gay marriage became law.

00:51:54.740 - 00:52:12.020

We fly it during Pride time. We recently had a diversity week and we lit up some of the buildings with the rainbow colours. Yeah. We're absolutely committed to that. We're a Stonewall diversity champion.

00:52:14.240 - 00:52:30.120

And do you have involvement in the Church any more, or do you worship locally? I left the Roman Catholic Church and I became a Liberal Catholic, became a member of the Liberal Catholic Church. Okay, when was that? 2001.

00:52:30.660 - 00:52:43.960

2001, okay. And where do you worship? Do you worship in a church or...? No. There's so few of us. We get together occasionally.

00:52:44.360 - 00:52:50.440

Yeah. We get together next week. Is that national? Yeah, it's national and international.

00:52:50.960 - 00:53:17.020

Okay. And what's your take on the Pope? I think the Pope's great. I love the Pope. I think what we're seeing now is probably a battle between the Pope and large sections of the Curia.

00:53:18.200 - 00:53:42.200

Over the direction of the Roman Catholic Church. He seems to go forward two steps and then drag back one the whole time. I don't think you can... I mean, the pressure that he must be under must be extreme. He's not very good on the woman issue. He doesn't seem very enlightened on issues to do with women.

00:53:42.200 - 00:53:52.580

But on gay issues, I get the impression that... Well, he's just changed the tone. Okay. Completely.

00:53:53.880 - 00:54:20.400

And made it possible for other bishops to speak out in favour in a way that has not been possible for the past 20 years or so. So, you know, obviously everybody would like him to go further and quicker and so on and so forth. But just changing the tone makes a hell of a lot of difference. And we'll see. We'll see what comes out of this synod on the family. I think he might still get surprised people.

00:54:20.940 - 00:54:40.220

Okay. But the change of tone is significant. It's inconceivable that Pope John Paul II or Ratzinger would have allowed himself to be filmed greeting a gay couple as Pope Francis was in New York. Yeah.

00:54:40.600 - 00:54:49.620

It's inconceivable. Yeah. So, I think he's really good. Just change of tone is really important. Yeah.

00:54:51.120 - 00:54:59.740

Roman Catholic Church, when it changes, it can change really quickly. It's because it's not democratic. Okay. So the advantage of that...

00:54:59.740 - 00:55:07.920

Works both ways. So the advantage of that is that it can change almost overnight. Okay. In a way that perhaps the church women can't.

00:55:08.520 - 00:55:17.560

Yeah, because of PCC meetings. Yeah, endless debates and so on and so forth. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, Pope Francis may pull off something really surprising.

00:55:18.320 - 00:55:43.840

Yeah. Okay. Nearly up to an hour, and I know you're very busy. Is there anything major that you think we haven't covered that you think would be appropriate to mention? I think that what bothers me a lot at the moment is that there's a whole generation of people now dying.

00:55:44.680 - 00:55:54.800

We've lost recently Jim Cotter. Yeah. Derek... He only died a couple of weeks ago.

00:55:57.560 - 00:56:10.160

He used to run the LGCM bookstore all the time. Derek. I can look that up, yeah. Ken Leach, who was really, really involved in some bought-offs and LGCM.

00:56:11.560 - 00:56:51.820

There's a whole generation of people dying who risked a lot, and I'm worried that we haven't done enough to honour them. And that we should be doing more to honour those who risk so much. And I've talked to Tracey about this, and I hope that she will do something about it, because people shouldn't go to their graves without some appreciation. I think it is on her heart from the last board meeting.

00:56:52.160 - 00:57:09.500

Good. And obviously this project is about getting those stories from people, because we're obviously very aware that a lot of the pioneering people have passed on or are very elderly and infirm. And obviously you're not in that category, but... I don't know.

00:57:10.780 - 00:57:26.160

Approaching. But, yeah, that is very much on our heart as a board of trustees. Okay, well, we've done 57 minutes. Okay.

00:57:26.440 - 00:57:31.280

So that is fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you. Is it all recorded?