Shaun Ward, director of music at St Laurence’s, Ludlow
You could be completely open and honest in a very safe environment. I heard very deep and personal stories. For both sides there was clearly a great deal of pain and cost. I still can’t get away from this fact that actually we have, as a country, made a decision. Pastorally, for us on the ground, it is very difficult when someone says “Will you give me a blessing?” and we have to say we can’t do that.
If we are going to support gay people, we should be including them in the office of marriage, because it builds for common life and things that are good. One person compared this to allowing an immigrant to come in, but not giving them full citizenship. The Church is full of very hard-working gay people but we don’t give them full citizenship.
I found myself breaking into tears in the last session, because it was quite a journey to have gone on. It drew attention to just quite how damaged and ostracised we feel as people in the Church.
For me, my worry is that this continued navel-gazing will only lead to further decline and further separation from a nation whom we are supposed to serve. My great worry is that we become the Church in England rather than Church of England. I hope we embrace gay marriage.
John Green, Archdeacon of Coventry
I get the feeling that, for some, these conversations are a chance to have the debate and “have it out”, which is very clearly what they are not. What this is about, really, is developing a gutsy understanding of what the roots of the disagreement are, and how it’s not just about people’s interpretation of scripture: it’s a lot deeper than that. If we think this process will give us an answer, it won’t.
I felt optimistic, in that I think encounters such as this may well help to glue the central body of the Church together and realise that some of the feelings that one side shares are also shared by the other. There is a degree of inevitability that there will be those who will feel compelled to leave. It is hard to see quite how a spectrum that wide can be accommodated in one Church.
Nick Gowers, Vicar of Holy Trinity, Old Hill, Worcester
I did not feel we ought to be having the conversations. It is the Bishops’ place to be upholding the traditional position and not putting us through the process. But I also felt I would like my voice to be heard.
We need to make sure we have gracious, godly, pastorally sensitive Evangelical folk who can articulate where they are coming from. It was a conversation about our respective individual experiences, and so my question coming out of it is: when are we going to have a conversation about scripture, theology, church history, tradition and the wider Communion?
Everybody was trying very hard to listen to one another, and that was very precious and valuable. I think we tiptoe around the issue in the C of E. One of the most refreshing bits was the honesty when somebody said to me: “I think you are wrong; you think I am wrong. We need to work out if we can be in the same Church, and if so, how.”
The weakness of the process is that, for somebody from a conservative position, you inevitably sound slightly more harsh, because it is more restrictive. What you cannot communicate in that situation and what was never talked about was how would we deal with it pastorally. The caricature, potentially, is that you are going to be unwelcoming and turn people away, and we are going to be as loving and welcoming as possible.
I think I realised that the Church of England was further from the traditional position than I feared, in practice, on the ground. I hope we would call people to a traditional view of marriage or celibacy, but my fear is that those who hold an orthodox position will become a tolerated minority.
Christopher Wilson, Vicar of All Saints’, Leamington Priors, and Holy Trinity, Leamington Spa
I attended with relief and hope: relief that the C of E is getting people around the table, and hope that the process will help us to find a constructive way forward.
Naïvely, perhaps, I was taken aback by the high level of fear expressed that the Clergy Discipline Measure or the secular courts might be used to try to force or control issues of sexuality. That’s not a good place for the Church and its clergy to be. As anticipated, stories of rejection, shameful at times, were painful to listen to. I felt being welcoming and inclusive in church was wholly inadequate, and resolved to do much more to reach out to minorities.
The elephant in the room, so far as the Conversations are concerned, is not really to do with LGBTIQ issues at all. It’s about the way we read and interpret the Bible. Preparatory reading included two essays taking different hermeneutical approaches, but this was not enough.
An overview of the different ways Christians have used the Bible throughout history and around the world would have helped. There was little scope to explore the interplay between scripture, tradition, and reason, or to tease out how and why previous convictions and assumptions on topics as diverse as usury, slavery, and the role of women had come to be re-examined.
A fundamental issue is whether there can be more than one authentic expression and understanding of Christianity: whether we can recognise diversity in the Church as legitimate and God-given. The great concern I’m left with is for the unity of the Church. Anglicans have always been diverse; it’s a strength, however frustrating it can be.
West Midlands participant
I was surprised to be asked to go. I would not have said I was doing anything that suggested I had a particular personal interest.
Overall, the atmosphere was conducive to being honest, and the people I engaged with were committed to listening and to respect.
When we met up afterwards, as part of the Bishop’s follow-up, we picked up on a thread that has given us all pause for thought, which is disagreeing with grace. Where I believe that something is wrong and should change, do I carry the pain of not changing, or do I assert change and inflict pain on others?
You cannot reconcile that at all comfortably, and I have been thinking about that more seriously: who really gets hurt here?