Diary of a Gay
Priest: The tightrope walker
Malcolm Johnson
Christian Alternative £9.99
Church Times Bookshop £9 (Use code CT577
)
(978-1-78279-002-0)
MALCOLM JOHNSON gave me a
long interview in 1993, just after he took up his appointment as
Master of the Royal Foundation of St Katharine in Stepney. He had
gained a tremendous reputation by his work for homeless people at
St Botolph's, Aldgate, and as the incongruous object of Chancellor
Newsome's scathing remarks when the Lesbian and Gay Christian
Movement was evicted from its office in the church tower. John
Whale, our editor, regarded him as "a serious figure", an accolade
awarded sparingly. Lionel Blue has apparently dubbed him the "pink
bishop".
I remember being unsure
whether Prebendary Johnson - since 2010 a Ph.D., thanks to his
longstanding historical interest in Bishop Blomfield of London -
was gay himself, and whether he had, in our office parlance, "a
friend"; and, since our readers mostly preferred not to know such
things, it was a decorous encounter that furnished a piece of
safety-first journalism.
Now I do know. In his
diaries, he has, in his own words, "dropped six of the seven
veils"; and the book is dedicated to his civil partner, Robert. It
is a terrific read - frank enough, though not, of course, in the
Tom Driberg league (it does reveal that, like Driberg in one
respect, Johnson was briefly married, a mistake he made much
earlier in life); and full of fascinating glimpses into the
twilight world of the Church of England. Some of the Church's
(heterosexual) bishops tried, at least, to do the decent pastoral
thing in an area that they disliked talking about in public. There
has been a colossal amount of talk since the cloak-and-dagger
approach of the 1960s, before the Sexual Offences Act, and after;
but how much has changed?
There are bishops still with
us who do not come out (so to speak) well from this diary. Yet it
is striking how humane such Bishops of London as Robert Stopford,
Gerald Ellison, and even, at first, Graham Leonard were at a time
when pastoral initiatives could be made to look scandalous. In
deepest Essex in the 1970s, I thought there was only one "gay"
vicar, whatever that meant: Fr Elers in Thaxted, who, the adults
said, was giving Bishop Trillo a spot of bother. You didn't have to
be a child to be mystified: Johnson also had to explain "gay" to a
Trollopian archdeacon in Amen Court.
Of course, as Johnson
records, many of the clergy were (and are) gay, though only a
handful were able to sustain long-term live-in partnerships, mainly
those working outside the parish system. As a result of his work
with the Albany Trust as a counsellor, and with the Clergy
Consultation, developing a support network, he had a good idea of
the numbers involved. Diary entries suggest that claims made for
the significance of homosexuality in the Church as a pastoral issue
50 years ago were supported by the numbers, as well as by the
qualitative consideration of lives wrecked by unresolved tensions
and judgemental attitudes.
The St Botolph's case in
1988, which moved Rowan Williams, then an Oxford professor, to
speak out against the humiliation of the St Botolph's PCC and the
LGCM, occurred, of course, against the background of the terrifying
early years of HIV/AIDS, made worse by an outbreak of unsympathetic
moralising.
Although the epidemic could
have provided more than enough outlet for one man's ministry,
Johnson's pastoral heart remained for "the community" in a broad
sense. His social circle has been wide, and, as any successful
priest must, he finds people interesting and sometimes amusing
(entries can be very funny). But his diary is also a reminder that,
in the C of E, if you plan to stick your neck out, it also helps to
be a bit posh (the family firm, employing more than 500, was
Johnson & Sons in Great Yarmouth), and to own your home.
He must have looked like a
good fit for the Royal Foundation of St Katharine, where he spruced
up the chapel and had tea with the Queen Mother. Among the things
that still anger him, such as the collapse after he left St
Botolph's of its work with the homeless, is his ousting from this,
his next post. He attributes it to the opposition of Lord
Churchill, whom I remember as one of the pleasantest people to make
conversation with in the days when the General Synod dined more
formally than it does now in York. We must speak as we find, I
suppose.