Abstract
Sarah Maxwell,
Transcendent Vocation: Why Gay Clergy Tolerate Hypocrisy
, Christian Alternative Books: Alresford, Hants, 2012; 155 pp.: 9781780999180, £11.99 (pbk)
This book examines the Church of England’s treatment of its gay clergy through the lenses of gay priests themselves, clergy who have lived through the past forty years of change in societal and ecclesiastical attitudes to gay and lesbian people and the history of those forty years. Focusing on gay male clergy, the author has conducted fourteen interviews with such and these form the heart of the book. Some supplementary interviews with retired heterosexual clergy are interesting but add little to the analysis or argument.
What emerges most strongly and movingly is the dedication and spiritual stamina of gay clergy who are expected to negotiate an impossibly complex matrix of tensions and relationships (particularly with bishops) in order to fulfil their vocation. The sacrifice involved in pursuing a vocation which has to transcend the Church’s muddle on sexuality is painfully clear in the interviews Dr Maxwell has conducted.
Also evident are the consequences of the theological valorization of unity which leads to behaviour on the part of those in authority which can at best be described as compromised and, at worst, hypocritical. This fetishization of unity seems peculiar in
The most serious question this book poses is over the episcopacy. The people who have the power to make a difference have constructed themselves as victims of both the idol of unity and of the ‘teaching’ of Issues in Human Sexuality (which in fact was a discussion document) and, as a result, often behave in ways that lack any sort of integrity or consistency and cause enormous pain and stress to their clergy. I would hope that this book would be widely read by bishops to whom it holds up a very uncomfortable mirror. The Jeffrey John affair revealed that the Church is not even willing to stand by Issues in Human Sexuality when put on the spot. A more suitable candidate for the episcopacy it would be hard to find and he is a gay man who lives according to the guidelines set out in Issues in Human Sexuality and yet the Church could not bring itself to consecrate him and in the process put all its rhetoric about its love of gay people under question. This book reveals that the attitude to gay clergy in the Church of England is becoming increasingly untenable against the background of both societal change and, something not covered in this book, extensive academic theological reflection. Something has to change and that requires the bishops to have more courage.