CANON Mpho Tutu van Furth has said that being barred from taking her godfather’s Church of England funeral because she was married to another woman was “hurtful because it was so unnecessary”.
The decision attracted international headlines, and widespread criticism, last week, after Canon Tutu van Furth, who is the daughter of the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was barred from conducting a funeral service in Shropshire owing to her being in a same-sex marriage.
Canon Tutu van Furth, who was ordained priest in the Episcopal Church in the United States, was not given permission to officiate (PTO) at the funeral of her godfather, Martin Kenyon, after discussions between Lambeth Palace and the diocese of Hereford.
“The denial was hurtful because it was so unnecessary,” Canon Tutu van Furth told the Church Times on Tuesday. “The funeral was to be an intimate gathering of family and godchildren, celebrated in a tiny parish in what is almost the middle of nowhere. The C of E could have extended as a courtesy and a kindness the PTO to me as a visiting priest from a sister church.”
A statement from the diocese of Hereford said: “We acknowledge this is a difficult situation,” and confirmed that “advice was given in line with the House of Bishops’ current guidance on same-sex marriage.”
The guidance, issued in 2014, states that “the House is not, therefore, willing for those who are in a same-sex marriage to be ordained to any of the three orders of ministry.”
Before a diocesan PTO can be considered, priests from elsewhere in the Anglican Communion require permission from the Archbishop of the Province in which they plan to officiate, which in this case is Canterbury.
A spokesperson for the diocese of Hereford confirmed that no formal application had been made to either the diocese or Lambeth Palace, on behalf of Canon Tutu van Furth.
The spokesperson said that the diocese had consulted Lambeth Palace on the issue before informing the Canon that she would not be permitted to preside at the funeral.
Lambeth Palace refused to comment, and directed all press enquiries to the diocese.
The service had been due to take place in St Michael and All Angels, Wentnor, in the diocese of Hereford, on Thursday of last week. In the event, it was relocated to a marquee in the garden of the old vicarage next to the church, to enable Canon Tutu van Furth to officiate.
On Friday, in an interview with The New York Times, Canon Tutu van Furth said that she was “stunned by the lack of compassion”, and that “you can’t speak a message of welcome and love and live a message of exclusion.”
In an email to clergy in the diocese, sent on Saturday and subsequently shared on Twitter by the Campaign for Equal Marriage in the Church of England, the Bishop of Hereford, the Rt Revd Richard Jackson, wrote: “I am acutely aware that for a number of you stories like this touch you at a deep and personal level.”
He wrote that, “despite it violating all of my pastoral instincts, I didn’t really have any options with the current rules about overseas PTO and the House of Bishops’ teaching document.”
Bishop Jackson said that “we did make a pastoral response to the family,” and “continue in a supportive prayerful relationship with them”.
After providing details — redacted in the Twitter version — for Zoom meetings for members of the clergy who “would like to talk about this”, Bishop Jackson suggested that “this incident re-focuses the mind of the College of Bishops on our work over the autumn to bring proposals to Synod in February following the LLF [Living in Love and Faith] process.”
He concluded that “going forward I think all of us recognise the current situation is untenable and that we cannot go on kicking the can down the road.
“We will need a solution that will allow everyone's conscience to be respected and acted on. I do not underestimate the difficulty of that task. The missional costs of not doing so are simply too high.”
A statement was issued by Church House confirming the timeline for the Bishops’ discussions and the expectation that their recommendation will be published in advance of the February meetings of the General Synod.
“Although there are deep and painful divisions within the Church of England over questions of identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage, the bishops hope that by listening prayerfully to this church-wide learning and engagement, a way forward for the Church of England will emerge in the coming year,” the statement read.
REACTION to the news that Canon Tutu van Furth had been barred from officiating provoked criticism in the UK and beyond.
On Thursday of last week, the former Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Revd Paul Bayes, wrote on Twitter that “to wring our hands and plead that things are difficult is not good enough. We urgently need to make space for conscience, space for pastoral care, and space for love.”
(In an interview with the Church Times on his retirement in February, Bishop Bayes said “I do not want to die in a Church that will not marry same-sex couples” (News, 14 February).)
The next day, the MP for Exeter, Ben Bradshaw, wrote on Twitter that the decision to prevent Canon Tutu van Furth from officiating was “utterly shameful”, and that it was “increasingly clear the Church of England can no longer justify its established status and privileges”.
The Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, which seeks to continue the work of Canon Tutu van Furth’s parents, issued a statement on Friday expressing “deep dismay” at the “callous treatment of Mpho Tutu van Furth over the last week”.
The statement continues that “the Church has again taken a position that undermines the safety, dignity, and value of members of the LGBTQIA community, and all human beings.”
On Wednesday, Canon Tutu van Furth’s wife, Dr Marceline Tutu van Furth, published an open letter addressed to God. “Please help the people of the Church of England who definitely are homophobic to clear their minds and allow any clergy person to marry any person they respect and love,” she wrote.
Several members of the General Synod also expressed their views online. On Thursday, the Revd Mae Christie (Southwark) wrote that “the more I look at this, the more angry, hurt & frustrated I am,” and concluded “enough is enough. Love is love.”
In contrast, Luke Appleton (Exeter), described Bishop Jackson’s letter as “DEEPLY DISTURBINGH” [sic]. In a post on Twitter on Saturday evening, Mr Appleton wrote that “the College of Bishop’s seem to have human feelings and individual conscience trumpting [sic] truth and Scripture. This will be bitterly opposed by anybody who believes that truth matters.”
In an earlier post, Mr Appleton accused “those attacking the diocese of Hereford” of “playing a deeply political game.
“They were just following regulations,” he wrote.
ON MONDAY, the C of E priest who conducted a service of celebration for Canon Tutu van Furth’s marriage in 2016, Canon Charlotte Bannister-Parker, said that the decision “denied who [she] is as a human being”.
“Committed intimate relationships are gifts from God, and when two people want to commit themselves to each other it really is important that we celebrate and acknowledge that,” she said.
But, currently, the “signalling to young people outside the Church and to the rest of the society over this issue is just utterly baffling”, she said.
Canon Bannister-Parker, who is Associate Minister of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, told the Church Times that she had the “greatest respect” for the Archbishop of Canterbury, and that she recognised that “trying to keep the Anglican Communion together is an incredibly high priority. However, there are traumatic and inconsistent messages being sent out which need to be addressed by the Church immediately.”
Discussions about same-sex marriage threatened to dominate the Lambeth Conference this summer, in a debate that was often presented as being between conservatives in the global South and liberals in the West (News, 5 August).
After a speech that acknowledged that “we are deeply divided,” but which recognised that Provinces that had sanctioned same-sex marriage did so only after “long prayer, deep study, and reflection on understandings of human nature”, Archbishop Welby was praised for having made room for continued disagreement without rupturing the Communion (News, 2 August).
Canon Bannister-Parker, however, said that the recent situation with Canon Tutu van Furth “exposes the heart and pain, and the inconsistency across the Christian world about attitudes to this issue, and if we’re a broad Anglican Church . . . then there must be in law provision to reflect that, which doesn’t exist at the moment”.
She spoke of the effect on the Anglican Communion of inconsistent messaging on homosexuality: “It’s not as if there aren’t LGBTI members of Anglican congregations throughout Africa who are greatly suffering, and have to experience issues such as corrective rape, and, in some cases, are even murdered because of their sexuality.”
In 2016, Canon Bannister-Parker, whose doctorate is in eco-theology, led an act of worship at a Cape Town hotel which involved blessing the wedding rings of Mpho and Marceline Tutu van Furth, but which did not include a blessing of the marriage.
Archbishop Tutu attended the celebration, Canon Bannister-Parker said. In 2013, the former Archbishop of Cape Town, who was a prominent figure in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and compared the campaign against homophobia to the fight for racial justice, said: “I would not worship a God who is homophobic.”
In 2006, Archbishop Tutu said in an interview with the Church Times that “There must come a time [in the current debate on homosexuality] when we will have to draw a line in the sand which cannot be crossed, and say enough is enough” (Interviews, 27 December 2021).
Read more on the story in Letters to the Editor and Andrew Brown’s press column