Justin Welby and Incompatible Thick Communities

There’s been a good mix of dust and flurry around the comments from the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, over the matter of same sex marriage, and its perceived good in the public square.

Welby was answering questions at the Cambridge Union in the UK, and it was a wide ranging interview lasting well over an hour. Of course the question of sexual ethics came up, and that’s where the attention has been centred. You can find the question around same sex marriage, and the response from Welby from the 34 minute mark.

Everything we see and understand in the huge amount of study we’ve done is that there are social goods in faithful lifelong stable relationships of people of the same sex being together and living in covenant relationships. I didn’t used to think, that my mind’s changed over the last 10 years…I do believe that we need to recognise the human dignity and the potential for good that lives in every human being regardless of issues of sexuality and that when they fall in love and when they live out that love faithfully and in stability, and faithfully and with stability and caring for others, it is a huge blessing for them and for society and I’ve seen that in so many places, that in the end even I began to realise that I was being thick.

There’s a lot in that statement, and not a few presumptions. And I think we should unpack what he said carefully rather than unload on him, and realise that it was a short statement in the middle of a long interview that had many good points to it.

Yet there is a lot in the question that led to that statement he made. And it’s worth commenting on it, because, let’s face it, the sexuality question is the great shibboleth moment in the public square for the church.  So first up, two comments on what Welby says, before concluding with a comment on the nature of the question itself:

Social Good?

First up, is the issue of social good. When Welby says that there is a lot of social good from such relationships the key question  to be asked is “What is the longitudinal study demonstrating this social good?” When something has moved from cultural taboo to cultural acceptance, the lead time for determining the direction it takes society will surely be long.

It can equally be argued – in fact more than equally because there is a huge longitudinal study on relationships throughout history -, specifically the covenant marriage between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others – is the foundation of much that we would call social good. Ten years of a mind change seems an inordinately short period of time in which to declare with confidence that one can see the social good of something.

None of this is to say that we should not recognise the present social good of many people who live different to us sexually, but I want to posit that this is despite their sexual lives, not primarily because of them. When Welby uses the word “blessing” he cannot be meaning the word in the same way that Scripture uses it. But we are not talking about individual private lives. We are talking “social good”.

The Lord gives many good gifts to the whole world, and the talented, compassionate people we meet from all walks of life are some of those gifts. But the gift of a sexual union that results from marriage between a man and a woman has given a stability to the culture that is, quite frankly, not found in places where this social bond is either lacking or sidelined.

Let me reiterate that this is a different issue to human dignity questions. Indeed it could equally be argued – as I am arguing here – that human dignity is best served in the context of rightly arranged understandings and practices of sexual relationships that align with Scripture.

This also raises – although not raised in his response – the issue of children who are products (and I use that term deliberately) of such relationships. There is a whole industry designed to have children born and bred and sold or given away to same-sex couples.

This is a stolen generation. Except it’s not stolen sneakily out the back door, it’s paid for and celebrated openly at the front door. Such children are not truly being blessed, no matter how happy the couple is who have them, no matter the posh school they go to and the trips they go on. I know it’s hard to see that, but give it time.

Welby is correct when he says that the church’s teachings must lead to a society in which we value every human being as made in God’s image and treated with dignity. Can we really as a culture say that that is what we are doing to young children in these situations?

Once again, “ten years” is not a long enough time frame to test this hypothesis on such children. I do not believe that this fruit of same sex relationships will turn out to be a social good for them. Welby, presumably, does? I am not sure. It would have been a good follow up question. But it was never asked. If anything, that has become a cultural taboo.

Thick?

This is where it gets problematic.  Did Welby say he was thick because he had previously believed the Bible on sexual matters and now, in a more enlightened time of his own life, does not? Is he bagging out the Bible?

Well not really. He doesn’t quite say that. And I am pretty sure he would not. Welby means that his interpretation of the Bible in terms of its social impact was “thick”. The Bible is fairly clear on sexual relationships and implicit in that clarity is that the biblical vision – God’s pronouncement on marriage – is for the social good. And he seems to either skirt that issue or hold it at bay.

Welby now counters that by stating that he could see much social good from covenant relationships that are same-sex, and that his previous concerns have subsided as he watches on and sees how these relationships flower, stabilise people, and aid society.

This, however, is just as problematic. It comes across as Welby attempting to create a distance between the Bible’s teachings on sexuality and the Bible’s condemnation of the social ethics that arise from sexual immorality. At its best it’s naive, at it’s worst it’s “We know better now, even better than God knew.”

One would only have to go to the famous passage in Romans 1 to see that it is impossible to firewall sexual immorality from all other forms of idolatry. Indeed the social justice that Welby expresses a desire for in answering a question just prior to the sexuality question, is  actually jeopardised by idolatries that integrate the idolatry of sexual immorality. Look what Paul asserts:

Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. (Romans 1:28-30)

Human wisdom is not wise in the way that godly wisdom is. The Bible tells us that there are ways that seem right a person but that the end of those ways is death. I presume we can extrapolate that out to a society.  Human wisdom – human social wisdom –  refuses to see the link between sexual immorality and societal and personal breakdown. And it has gone to great lengths to mask such breakdown when it occurs, or at least deflect it.

Yet the Apostle Paul saw it clearly. To do what one ought not to do in one area of life, and to do so in a celebratory manner, opens a doorway not simply personally, but societally, to all sorts of ills and consequences that we did not foresee or intend. Welby’s response is short-sighted. Indeed it is almost “thick” in terms of a biblical social and political response.

Compatibility?

Which brings us to the question itself that led to the answer. Here it is:

Your tenure as Archbishop included the church’s approval of blessings for same sex couples. Despite this, the church still does not allow gay marriage in its churches. Do you see the church’s definition of marriage changing in future years, and do you think this view is compatible with the 21st century?

Mark those last words: “compatible with the 21st century”. Astonishing in terms of their naivety.  For a couple of reasons.

First, what is it about the 21st century that is so refreshingly different, so modern and so generous and safe from the centuries that have gone before us?

Is ubiquitous online hardcore, violent porn compatible with the 21st century? Clearly it is. Is a massive gap between the wealthiest in the world and the poorest in the world compatible with the 21st century? Once again, yep. And antisemitism that results in music festivals calling for death to Israelis? Is that compatible with the 21st century? You tell me. Write up your own list.

The implication itself is astonishing. It is the epitome of the chronological snobbery that CS Lewis accused moderns of. In what way – and for what reason – is the 21st century supposed to be a better century in terms of rights? Well, ironically, the reason is simple: Christianity gave the world a vision of an eschatological hope that was coming.

Graeco-Roman culture did not give the world that hope. The golden age of the gods and the heroes was in the past.  Eastern philosophy did not – and still does not –  not give the world that hope. History is cyclical and karma is our lot – that’s the Eastern way.

The Bible – and the Bible alone -, revealed and completed in Jesus Christ and his death, resurrection, ascension, session and impending return to judge and reward gives us that hope. And only that does.  Every other future-driven hope for a better world is squatting on land it did not purchase. Tom Holland the historian will tell you as much.

But second, since when has it been the role of the church to make itself compatible with any century? If it had attempted to do so – indeed whenever it has attempted to do so –, it has been a spectacular failure.

Was the church compatible with the 1st century into which it was birthed? Decidedly not!  Was it compatible with ethnic tribalism? With slavery? With the dispossession of the weak? With the pride and the brutal power of the Caesars? With the casual disdain of life that saw millions slaughtered? With sex as a power play? With the demeaning of women? With the exposure of baby girls?

You know the answer to all of those questions. Yet here we are in the 21st century still wondering how we can be compatible! The church’s refusal to be compatible with any century was led, in part, by its commitment to being a “thick” community that was a counter to the society of its day, one that offered a vision of the King and his kingdom, and what life could look like in any century lived under his reign. A desire for compatibility with any century when you are supremely fitted for eternity is a blind alley.

And that is just as true of the 21st century as any.

I can tell you right now, this quiet revival we are hearing of, this turning up at churches by young people disillusioned by the 21st century, wracked by the pain and despair of trying to be compatible with the 21st century’s sexual ethic, its work ethic, its identity markers, its shibboleths and cancellations, its meaning and purpose vacuum, – they are no longer looking for something that looks like what the 21st century values!  They have tried compatible and it has crushed them.

And even for the curious. Those who don’t feel crushed by the 21st century, but feel that something is still missing no matter how much great sex they have had with however many great people? Yes the church is there for them too, offering a weird incompatibility with an open hand.

The church grows and moves and gains ground the less compatible it is with every century. That’s the superpower of the church right there. It will only be as we move away from the craven desire to be compatible, and move towards a cruciform desire to be courageous, compassionate, clear-headed, cost-bearing, and contented whatever comes our way, that society will sit up and take notice.

Sit up and take notice and hate on us. OR sit up and take notice and flock to us. That’s been the way since the start. That’s been the way since Paul said to the Corinthians:

But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.  To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. And who is equal to such a task? (2 Corinthians 2:14-16)

If we are going to be “thick” then let it be in the form of “thick communities of incompatibility” that we create, in which Jesus is worshipped, the lost are found, the hurting healed, the bruised bandaged, and the idolatrous worship God in spirit and truth.