what it feels like to watch general synod

Watching the Livestream of General Synod, I suddenly realise just how much of a toll the past few years have taken. 

Please, don’t get me wrong. I am grateful to everyone there supporting queer people and doing their best to make the Church a better place for us. Thank you. A very special thank you to my own bishop, Steven Croft, for his work and support here. It is so good to be a clergyman in your diocese.

But it is hard to watch people debating your life.

They talk endlessly about the ‘doctrine of marriage’ because this is what a conservative majority that wants no change does. They make a thing the point when it isn’t the point in order never to have to talk about what actually matters.

Every minority knows there is only one question when it comes down to it:

Are we as human as you?

In church terms, we’re actually talking about a theology of humanity. We’re saying, perhaps you might have noticed, but the Bible actually isn’t a book about marriage. It’s a book about God and people. (I mean, relationships come into it; I totally agree. But it’s a bit broader than some folk seem to grasp…) For you really can’t read the Bible seriously without coming to some ultimate understanding of both of these things – God, and people. 

So: what do we think the Bible says about the human condition? Does it in fact allow for different qualities of humanity? Does the Bible (for example) allow for apartheid? Or racism more generally? Or how about anti-semitism? Does the Bible make some people (any people) better than others? Does the Bible (let’s go there) place more value on men than women? Are disabled people worth less? Is a black person’s vote worth three-fifths of a white person’s, biblically speaking? 

Are queer people less human than straight people?

That’s the debate happening at General Synod, and in every speech I hear kindly and patiently pleading for time and slowness and a “traditional understanding” of life, I hear those arguments. I hear people who are fellow-Christians argue that I am less.

I hear people with no concept of the Bible at all. With no grasp that it is a book about God - and people. Or, if they do, their grasp about what the Bible says about people is seriously, seriously flawed.

And, after all these years, I confess, this week I find it all too much. So all of ten minutes is all I have listened too. Thank you for all of you who stood up for me. I am grateful, in the sort of way that a slave is grateful that someone notices they have no freedom, but for now I go on having no freedom anyway. Please forgive me if I don’t sound as grateful as I should.

Many of you aren’t expected to be grateful for people celebrating your relationships, for being able to hold the hand of someone you love in a public place, for getting married and not losing your job, for just being who you are and not having bishops say that your essence is a complicated thing and people understandably see things differently and it’s OK to view you as less human. As less than human.

Me?

I walk my dog around the lake at college, and then get on with following Jesus. And with loving my neighbour, whoever they are. For they are loved by Jesus and are every bit as wonderful as it is possible for a person to be.

Just like you.

And me.