A Disreputable Priest: Being gay in anti-gay cultures
Ian Corbett
Gilead Books £7.95
(978-0-9932090-0-0)
Church Times Bookshop £7.15 (Use code CT442)

THERE are points in Ian Corbett’s autobiography where it could be retitled Last Surviving ’60s Radical Priest Tells All. For, whatever else this memoir is, it bars no holds in its assessment of a Church that Corbett feels has treated him shabbily and has lost sight of its God-given vocation.

A Disreputable Priest attempts at least three challenging things: first, to recount the sometimes picaresque ministry of a talented gay British priest in Manchester, Southern Africa, Ireland, Canada, and the United States; second, to chart the impact of homophobia on his ministry in those settings; and, finally, to offer insight into the state of Anglicanism at a time of handwringing about sexuality around the Communion.

The memoir is at its strongest when it sticks to autobiography. Corbett makes a substantial case for “priesthood” as holy outsider (a role that one senses he pursued with a genuine relish). His account of his early ministry in Manchester is a reminder not only of the political ferment of the 1970s, but of how homophobic the UK then was.

Like Woody Allen’s Zelig, Corbett is unexpectedly caught up in striking moments of history, not least ministering in Southern Africa around the time of Nelson Mandela’s release. A founding member of the Gay Christian Movement (later LGCM), Corbett’s time as Dean of Tuam Cathedral coincided with the notorious 1998 Lambeth Conference. His concurrent (modest) claim that one can be “gay and Christian” caused a local furore.

Celluloid Mafia wisdom has it that “revenge is a dish best eaten cold.” Alas, this book often takes this dictum seriously. At points, Corbett’s memoir singles out individuals for severe, almost vengeful criticism. While “spiritual autobiography”, as St Augustine shows, is never about holding back, it is surely predicated on finding forms to negotiate rawness and anger theologically.

The defining weakness in Corbett’s memoir, then, is that it hasn’t quite found its final form. After a lyrical opening section written to a lost love, the bulk of the book is overly detailed and digressive. One too often loses sight of the central concern — the negative impact on ministry of being gay in homophobic contexts. The final section — which offers broader reflections on the motors of Corbett’s vocation — attempts to ground his story, but the book is in want of redaction.

Ultimately, A Disreputable Priest makes a case for Corbett’s contention that “only the person who knows the grace of deep, uninhibited, passionate relationships can love the world in service and ministry.” But the book feels like a brave failure. Corbett’s meditations would have been all the more powerful if they could have been integrated into a less diffuse personal narrative.

The Revd Rachel Mann is Priest-in-Charge at St Nicholas’s, Burnage, and Resident Poet and Minor Canon at Manchester Cathedral.