A lot of LGBTI+ people didn’t feel safe speaking openly but now feel that we are really being heard. “Of course there could have been more LGBTI+ people, he said, “but if we focus on that we risk shutting out our voices going forward. The Rev Alex Clare-Young, the other LGBTI+ member on the co-ordinating group, acknowledged criticisms by some who felt they were under-represented in the group and in the wider working party of which five out of 40 members are openly LGBTI+. You can hear the voices of people in a way they haven’t been heard before.” “I always felt I’ve been on the outside knocking on the window. “What’s new about this process is the way it has brought us into the heart of the Church of England’s conversation,” he said. The Rev Giles Goddard is one of only two members on the co-ordinating group who openly identifies as part of the LGBTI+ community. The LLF process began more than three years ago after a highly unusual decision by General Synod in February 2017 not to take note of a House of Bishops report on same-sex relationships.
They included Andrew and Gerhard, a married gay couple Phil and Ici, a mixed-race heterosexual couple with biological and adopted children and Debbie and Stephanie, who married before Debbie had transitioned to be a woman. The resources include 16 podcasts and 17 short films featuring personal stories. He stressed that LLF was not a policy document, a set of recommendations or a debate but “an appeal to join an unprecedented human journey”. We need to remember we are talking about people so that even at points of intense disagreement we treat each other well and we need to learn together about what it means to be a human being and how God wants us to live.” “We needed to get away from a single-issue approach.
The Bishop of Coventry, the Rt Rev Christopher Cocksworth, said Living in Love and Faith (LLF) represented a whole new approach to the church’s disagreements and was believed to be the most extensive work in this area by any faith group in the world. The Church of England has published its long- awaited resource, Living in Love and Faith, with the publication of a book and online resources aimed at enabling Christians to explore issues of identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage.Īt a press conference, journalists discovered that the timetable for considering the documents and deciding on policy could be as swift as two years. “We are Andrew and Gerhard and we are living together in love and faith.”
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