Should Evangelicals disagree with CEEC?- a response to Paul Roberts.

Dr Paul Roberts lectures in Worship and Church History at Trinity College Bristol and is one of the convenors of Inclusive Evangelicals, a body of Church of England Evangelicals who are supportive of same-sex relationships

In his new article ‘Can you be Evangelical and not agree with the CEEC?’ published on the Inclusive Evangelicals’ website,[1] Roberts is critical of the addition to the CEEC (Church of England Evangelical Council) basis of faith of an additional declaration  which states:

‘We acknowledge God’s creation of humankind as male and female and the unchangeable standard of Christian marriage between one man and one woman as the proper place for sexual intimacy and the basis of the family.’ [2]

Roberts’ argument is that this was an unfortunate change because ‘the prior version of the CEEC basis… allowed discussion and disagreement among evangelicals on this issue’ and attempting to close down evangelical discussion and debate on the issue has had unfortunate consequences.

His argument is in six main parts and in this article I shall consider each of these parts in turn before giving an overall assessment of his position.

First, he declares that:

‘The strength and weakness of evangelicalism has been a pragmatic desire to root an accessible faith in the pages of the Bible.  This is a strength, because it takes the intellect of the hearer seriously and encourages them to root their faith in the pages of a book which they can read for themselves.  In so doing, evangelical Christians have access to a vital source for faith: the living Word of God written.  It means that most evangelical Christians have their personal faith deeply empowered from this source. By comparison, many other traditions tend to foster Christians who, while respecting the Bible, generally don’t use it as much, and are not therefore nurtured and fed from the scriptures to the same extent.’

Most of what is said in this quotation is correct and helpful. However, Roberts’ claim that the evangelical desire to root faith in the Bible is ‘pragmatic’ is problematic. The dictionary definition of ‘pragmatic’ is ‘what is practicable, expedient and convenient,’[3] and to suggest that evangelicals seek to root faith in the Bible because this is practicable, expedient, or convenient is misleading. It suggests that evangelicals have looked round for a basis for their faith and picked the Bible for these reasons. However, the actual reason why evangelicals have rooted their faith in the Bible is because of the theological conviction that the Bible is, as Roberts himself says, ‘the living Word of God written.’ In the words of the CEEC basis of faith, the reason evangelicals root their faith in Scripture is because they believe that the Bible is:

’ …. the wholly reliable revelation and record of God’s grace, given by the Holy Spirit as the true word of God written. The Bible has been given to lead us to salvation, to be the ultimate rule for Christian faith and conduct, and the supreme authority by which the Church must ever reform itself and judge its traditions.’ [4]

To put it another way, for evangelicals acceptance of the authority of the Bible is not just useful, but mandatory. This is the authority that has been given to them by God himself.

Secondly, Roberts contends that their ‘pragmatic focus on the Bible’ has been a weakness as well as a strength for evangelicals because:

‘Despite having a shared ‘bottom line’ authority with the scriptures, evangelical Christians have continued to disagree over some important matters, including infant baptism, whether conversion to Christ is a human or a divine act (Arminianism vs Calvinism), the nature of Christ’s second coming and so on.’

Roberts is correct when he says that evangelicals have disagreed about these matters. Where his argument is problematic is in its implication that such disagreements are a necessary result of the importance which evangelicals attach to the Bible.

 In one sense of course this true. If evangelicals didn’t bother to engage with the Bible as a result of their shared conviction about its importance, then they wouldn’t disagree about what it teaches. Buddhists, for example, do not disagree about the teaching of the Bible in the way that evangelicals do because, generally speaking, their religious convictions do not lead them to engage with it.   

However, where Robert’s argument is weak is that he seems to suggest that disagreement about the Bible is a necessary consequence of engagement with it. This is not true. Evangelicals (and other Christians) agree as well disagree about what the Bible teaches and there is no a priori reason why such agreement should not be universal. The fact that it is not universal is not because disagreement is something that is inherent in the very fact of engaging with the Bible (if it was, the agreement just noted would not exist). Rather, it is because in a fallen world, where human understanding is darkened because of sin even among those who have been redeemed in Christ, those reading the Bible either fail to understand what the Bible actually says or fail to accept it when they do. All disagreement over what the Bible says can be traced to these two causes.

That is to say, disagreement is not a necessary consequence of engagement with the Bible. It is a consequence of reading the Bible in a world affected by sin.

Thirdly, Roberts suggests that:

‘Another potential weakness has been the tendency for Evangelicals to under-play the ambiguities found in the scriptures, particularly where these ambiguities arise from the diversity of the various writers and theologies within the Bible (yes, there are multiple theologies in the Bible – a point upon which many evangelical scholars would agree).’

If I have understood him correctly, what Roberts is suggesting here is that evangelicals have failed to properly acknowledge that what the Bible says is ambiguous and contains multiple different theologies. The problem with this suggestion is that it undercuts the authority of Scripture.

This is a point made by Oliver O’ Donovan in his study of the Thirty Nine Articles.  Commenting on the prohibition in Article XX against expounding ‘one place of Scripture, that it may be repugnant to another; he notes that underlying this prohibition is the fact that the English Reformers:

‘…. had sufficient experience of diversifying interpretations of Scripture to know that they had negative implications for the question of authority… Unless we can think that Scripture is readable as whole, that it communicates a unified outlook and perspective, we cannot attribute doctrinal authority to it, but only to some part of it at the cost of some other part. The authority of Scripture, then, presupposes the possibility of a harmonious reading; correspondingly, a church which presumes to offer an unharmonious or diversifying reading may be supposed to have in mind an indirect challenge to the authority of Scripture itself.’^[5]

To put it simply, if the Bible is ambiguous and contains multiple different theologies then the Bible as a whole cannot be authoritative for Christian belief and practice. In this situation someone has to resolve its ambiguity and select between its theologies and that someone is either the Church or the individual believer. Either way it is no longer Scripture itself that has supreme authority, but some part (or parts of it) as selected by the Church or by an individual.

What this means is that Roberts needs to be clear about the implications of what he is saying. Is he really wanting to say that the Bible (‘the living Word of God written’) should not be regarded as authoritative for Christian belief and practice?

Fourthly, Roberts contends that evangelicals have abandoned a literal approach to Scripture, but have not been prepared to be open about the fact that they have done so.

He declares:

‘… there has been a rather coy silence from the main evangelical voices over a gradual abandonment of literalism by evangelical scholars in the Church of England, and in British evangelicalism more widely.  When did you last hear a sermon defending the historical truth of a six-day creation, or the accuracy of the Bible’s genealogical dating of the creation of the first human being in, say, Luke 3:23-38?’

He then further states:

‘We recognise that the Bible was written by people of their time, and that their own understandings are weaved into the fabric of God’s revealed word.  It therefore needs to be contextualised and interpreted into our own age.  This conclusion is not so simple as – but much more credible than – literalism.  It also takes the original people and ages of the Bible much more seriously.

If I were alone in this conviction among evangelicals, then I would understand that my evangelical credibility would be under reasonable question.  However, I know that I am not – most Anglican evangelical scholars would agree with me on the above point and its implications.  Most evangelical ordinands emerging from English theological colleges to be ordained probably would too.  But evangelicals have been very reticent about speaking of this publicly: partly this is to preserve unity with more literalist evangelical Christians, and partly because it poses challenges for some over-simple views held in the evangelical pews (or, more likely, chairs).’

There are three problems with what Roberts writes in these two quotations.

a) He confuses ‘literalism’ with a particular reading of certain biblical texts.

As J I Packer argues in his book Fundamentalism and the Word of God, what evangelicals have traditionally meant when they have said that the Bible should be read literally is that:

‘…The proper natural sense of each passage (i.e. the intended sense of the writer) is to be taken as fundamental; the meaning of texts in their own contexts, and for the original readers, is the necessary starting point for inquiry into their wider significance. In other words, Scripture statements must be interpreted in the light of the rules of grammar and discourse on the one hand, and of their own place in history on the other. This is what we should expect in the nature of the case, seeing that the biblical books originated  as occasional documents addressed to contemporary audiences; and it is exemplified in the New Testament exposition of the Old, from which the fanciful allegorizing practised by Philo and the Rabbis is strikingly absent. This is the much misunderstood principle of interpreting scripture literally.’[6]

As he goes on to write:

‘This literalism is founded on respect for the biblical forms of speech; it is essentially a protest against the arbitrary imposition of inapplicable literary categories on scriptural statements. It is this ‘literalism’ that present day evangelicals profess. But to read all Scripture narratives as if they were eye-witness reports in a modern newspaper, and to ignore the poetic and imaginative form in which there are sometimes couched, would be no less a violation of the canons of evangelical literalism then the allegorizing of the Scholastics was; and this sort of ‘literalism’ Evangelicals repudiate. It would be better to call such exegesis ‘literalistic’ rather than rather than ‘literal’ so as to avoid confusing two very different things.’[7]

Contrary to what Roberts might seem to suggest, the sort of ‘literalism’ referred to by Packer is not something that evangelicals have abandoned. As, for example, the material emanating from Tyndale House, the premier British evangelical biblical studies centre, makes clear, it remains the basis of contemporary evangelical biblical scholarship.

Nor is there any contradiction between upholding literalism in this sense and not taking the view that in Genesis 1 Moses describes God as creating the world in six days of twenty fours each, or that Luke’s genealogy is meant to provide an exhaustive father to son list of all those people who existed in the line of descent between Adam and Jesus. It can be perfectly reasonably argued that the literary study of these texts indicates that the intention of Moses was to describe God’s creative activity using the days of Hebrew working week as an analogy[8] and that Luke’s intention was to provide a selective genealogy for Jesus, consisting of seventy-seven persons, as way of describing the complete abolition of sins for all people brought about by Christ.[9]

b)  It is not entirely clear what Roberts is getting at when he writes about the need to  ‘… recognise that the Bible was written by people of their time, and that their own understandings are weaved into the fabric of God’s revealed word’ and that it therefore ‘needs to be contextualised and interpreted into our own age’ and when he declares that this is ‘not so simple as – but much more credible than – literalism.’  

It is obviously the case that the inspired writers of scripture were people of their own time and that their understandings as people of their time are contained in Scripture.  No one, as far as I know, has ever questioned this. Furthermore, as far as I know no one has ever questioned the need for the bringing together of what have been called the ‘two horizons’ of  the original situation addressed by a biblical text and our current situation, in order to discern what the Bible has to say to us today. To use John Stott’s famous analogy, successful Christian communication needs to be like a bridge that is grounded in the Bible at one end and the modern world at the other and bridges the gap between the two. [10]

 However, it is a mistake to contrast this interpretative approach with ‘literalism’ as Roberts seems to do.  As we have seen, literalism is about understanding as accurately as possible the content of the biblical text as originally given. The sort of bridge building envisaged by Stott starts from this kind of ‘literal’ understanding of the Bible and then asks ‘If God said that then, what does this means for us today?’

c) It is simply not the case that that evangelicals have been ‘very reticent’ about the need to ensure that a bridge is built between the Bible and modern world. Every evangelical I know, even the most conservative, has fully accepted this point and seeks to put it into practice. However, the point they would also make is one made by Stott that Roberts fails to mention. Stott writes:

‘…. there are perils in the clamant demand for relevance. If we become exclusively preoccupied with answering the questions people are asking, we may overlook the fact that they often ask the wrong questions and need to be helped to ask the right ones. If we acquiesce uncritically in the world’s own self-understanding, we may find ourselves the servants rather of fashion than of God. So, in order to avoid the snare of being a ‘populist’ or a modern false prophet, the type of bridge must be built must be determined more by the biblical revelation than the zeitgeist or spirit of the age.’ [11]

Conextualising and interpreting Scripture must not involve changing its content or watering down its message so that it simply says what the modern world wants it to say. To do this is to be unfaithful to God whose Word we are meant to be conveying, and unhelpful to the people who we are addressing who need to have the opportunity to hear what God has to say and not some edited version of it.

Fifthly, the danger I have just mentioned comes to the fore when Roberts moves on to write specifically about the place of the Bible in the modern Christian debate about sexuality.  Roberts writes:

‘The debate over sexuality has forced many evangelicals to re-think their understanding of how the Bible speaks to us today. I have met many perplexed, intelligent evangelical laypeople who feel completely under-resourced to do necessary hard, personal thinking over the issues.  They have had to learn to engage constructively with colleagues, friends and family members who are LGBTQI+ but in their evangelical church they are faced with a line which has not budged.  They find themselves straddling a day-to-day context where they accept, mix with and socialise with active and practising gay friends and family, and a church context which states that to be such a person is sinful, disordered and in need of healing from a particular manifestation of the Fall. This position is so difficult that it’s understandable that being told what ‘the Bible’s answer’ is (and to make acceptance of that as a condition of continuing evangelical identity) simply will no longer wash.  They are looking for some creative engagement between the Bible and their context and not merely being told to go away and read so-and-so if their questions get too tricky.  It is a great shame that many evangelical and charismatic churches in the Church of England failed to get thoroughly enmeshed with Living in love and faith: the need to help all Christians, not merely the clergy, to engage with, and to explore a range of opinions and experience about this matter in an open, rather than a prescriptive way is an urgent pastoral, as well as theological, issue.’

Roberts is undoubtedly correct when he says that many evangelical laypeople feel unequipped to engage in the modern debate about sexuality. He is also undoubtedly correct when he says that many people feel a disconnect between their normal social interactions with LGBQI + people and traditional evangelical teaching on marriage and sexual ethics

However:

a ) Despite Roberts criticisms of CEEC, in reality CEEC and those involved with it have been assiduous in seeking to promote a constructive evangelical engagement with current issues relating to human sexual identity and practice. Furthermore, they have also been deeply involved with the Living in Love and Faith process and continue to be involved with the Next Steps process that has followed on from it. Roberts’ description of the present situation verges on a caricature in this regard.

b ) Roberts does not ask the key question about whether the Bible does actually teach that those who are involved in same-sex relationships are ‘sinful, disordered and in need of healing from a particular manifestation of the Fall.’  If the answer to this question is ‘yes,’ then Christian lay people need to be helped to understand that this is the case, why it is the case, and how they should behave in the light of the fact that this is the case. As I have said earlier in this article, we cannot simply change or water down what the Bible has to say in order to make it fit with what the modern world wants to hear. The fact that it would make life much easier for many evangelical laypeople if the Bible said that same-sex relationships were acceptable to God does not mean that they are acceptable to him, and, if they are not, evangelical leaders cannot conceal this fact. The fact that the CEEC’s line ‘has not budged’ is only a fault if that line was wrong in the first place and Roberts does not even attempt to show that this was the case.

A similar issue arises when Roberts goes to write:

‘The saddest part of this is the number of believers who now have felt they should abandon their evangelical inheritance because they were not helped to engage in this way.  Too many are no longer reading a Bible which they believe is condemnatory of their loved ones.  This is a tragedy because the Bible is the Word of God written, and it was written to bring Good News and to enrich and nourish faith.  It is not toxic, but many former evangelicals believe it to be so.  There are many ways of relating it to life’s difficult questions – it’s just that these have not been properly taught, encouraged or explored, partly for fear that a set of party lines may cease to be followed, resulting in congregations which are diversified, rather than just unified.  Perhaps the most tragic of all is that this approach, which can sometimes border on ‘the vicar knows best’, is a denial of one of the core strengths of evangelical practice and spirituality: the open Word of God, to be read by anyone, available to everyone, for guidance and the nurture of their faith in today’s world.’

Roberts is right when he says that it is a tragedy that many have given up being evangelicals because they can no longer accept what the Bible teaches about human sexuality. However, the Bible says what God wants it to say and if it in fact says that same-sex relationship are a form of sin of which people need to repent, then it is not legitimate to say to people that they may be able to read it in some other way (which is what Roberts seems to suggest). The only legitimate approach in this situation has to be to seek to help people to see that the biblical teaching that they currently view as ‘toxic’ is in reality life giving because it offers a way of life that enables people flourish in the way intended by God both in this world and in the world to come.[12]

As before, the key issue, which Roberts avoids, is the question of what the Bible actually says. Everything depends on this.

Sixthly, Roberts misrepresents the nature of the decision by CEEC to add an additional declaration on marriage and sexual ethics to its Basis of Faith. He writes:

‘Rather than walking alongside the changing experiences of members of congregations, they have chosen instead to circle the wagons and speak from on high by defining the correct way of interpreting the scriptures on a new (and contentious) set of subjects.  Essentially, by amending the basis of faith, they (and those who have joined with them) are saying that it is impossible to ‘be an evangelical’ on this matter and have a different view. The book is closed.’

There are three problems with this statement:

a ) The addition to the basis of faith does not mean that those belonging to CEEC do not take seriously the importance of responding to the experiences of ordinary congregation members. They do.

However, they hold that the Bible’s teaching about marriage and sexual ethics, as this has been understood by the Church of England and the Christian Church as whole down the centuries, provides the proper theological framework within which to understand these experiences and respond to them in a pastorally appropriate fashion.

b ) It is not the case, as Roberts seems to suggest, that CEEC suddenly came up with a new view of marriage and sexual ethics that no one had ever held before. What CEEC was doing by adding the additional declaration was acting conservatively in the sense of seeking to conserve the ancient view of marriage and sexual ethics in the view of the challenge to it arising from the influence of the sexual ethics of modern secular society. It is those like Roberts who are on the ‘inclusive’ side of the contemporary Christian debate about sexual ethics who have sought to change things, not CEEC.

c ) CEEC is indeed saying that a proper evangelical approach to sexual ethics means holding to the traditional, biblical, approach to marriage and sexual ethics. However, it is difficult to see why Roberts sees saying this as wrong in principle. CEEC takes one view of the matter and Inclusive Evangelicals take another, and in view of what they believe both are under an obligation to say that they think their view of the matter is the right one.

I suspect Roberts thinks that CEEC should have agreed that marriage and sexual ethics should be treated as adiaphora, things on which Christians can rightly agree to disagree, since in his article he refers with approval to the agreement to disagree over the mode of Christ’s presence at the Lord’s Supper arrived at by Luther and Zwingli at Marburg in 1549. However the reason that CEEC did not take this approach is because that it does not believe that marriage and sexual ethics can be viewed as adiaphora.

As the CEEC statement Gospel, Church and Marriage explains:

‘We recognise that some fellow Christians no longer accept the Church’s teaching on marriage,singleness and sex but, because it is an integral part of our calling to be holy, we cannot treatthis teaching as an ‘optional extra’ (or adiaphora).

• We believe this teaching is both apostolic and essential to the gospel’s transforming

purpose and thus must be compassionately and clearly proclaimed and explained in and

by the Church.

• This area is therefore of a higher order than other divisive matters, often viewed as

‘secondary’ (for example, the ordination of women), because it calls for faithful obedience

to the unambiguous and authoritative teaching of Scripture concerning godly living and

human flourishing.

• Thus, the upholding of this teaching, rooted in our creedal confession of God as Creator,

and the enabling of Christians to live it with joy and confidence, is an essential aspect of

biblical faithfulness—especially when, as in our day, these matters are being so hotly

contested.’ [13]

Roberts presumably disagrees with CEEC’s assessment of the matter, but he can hardly fault them for acting according to their convictions on the matter. It would have been wrong of them not to do so.

In summary, Roberts makes a number of good points in his article.  However, as we have seen, there are serious problems with the overall argument of his article.

1. He wrongly claims that the evangelical commitment to the authority of the Bible is pragmatic in nature, whereas in fact it is due to the theological conviction that the Bible is, as Roberts himself puts it: ‘the living Word of God written.’   
2. He wrongly suggests that it is the importance that evangelicals attach to the Bible that has led to disagreement about its meaning, whereas in fact this is a result of the Bible being read in a world affected by the Fall.
3. He implicitly undermines the authority of the Bible by asserting that the Bible contains ambiguities and multiple theologies.
4. He wrongly suggests that evangelicals have abandoned a literal reading of the Bible whereas they still adhere to the kind of literalism described by Packer.
5. He fails to address the key question of what the Bible actually teaches about marriage and sexual ethics in spite of the fact that this is what needs to determine a proper Christian pastoral approach to these issues.
6. He fails to note that while a bridge needs to be built between the biblical message and the modern world, this cannot involve changing or watering down the Bible’s message to fit in with what the modern world wants  to hear.
7. His account of conservative evangelical engagement with issues to do with human sexuality and with the LLF process is so unfair as to be almost a caricature.
8. He fails to show that he understands why the CEEC added an additional declaration to its basis of faith or that he understands why CEEC holds that matters to do with marriage and sexuality cannot be regarded as adiaphora.

---

[1] Paul Roberts, Inclusive Evangelicals, ‘Can you be Evangelical and not agree with the CEEC?’ at: https://www.inclusiveevangelicals.com/post/can-you-be-evangelical-and-not-agree-with-the-ceec

[2] Church of England Evangelical Council, Basis of Faith, Additional Declarations 2,  at: https://ceec.info/basis-of-faith/.

[3] Chambers Dictionary, ‘Pragmatic’ (Edinburgh: Harrap, 2002), p.1184.

[4] Church of England Evangelical Council, Basis of Faith, 3.

[5] Oliver O’Donovan, On the Thirty Nine Articles (Exeter: Paternoster Press, pp.56-57  

[6] J I Packer, Fundamentalism and the Word of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), pp.102-103.  

[7] Packer, p. 104.

[8] C. John Collins, Reading Genesis Well (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2018), Kindle Edition, pp.164-165.

[9] Augustine, On the Harmony of the Gospels, 2.4.12-13.

[10] John Stott, I believe in Preaching (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1982), Ch.

[11] Stott, p.139.

[12] For good examples of this kind of approach see, for example, Sam Allberry, Is God ant-gay? (Epsom: Good Book Company, 2013, Dave Bennett, A War of Loves (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2018) and Ed Shaw, Purposeful Sexuality (London: IVP. 2021)

[13] CEEC, Gospel Church and Marriage, pp.4-5 at: https://ceec.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/gospel_church___marriage_-_preserving_apostolic_faith_and_life.

A review of Mark Vasey Saunders – Defusing the Sexuality Debate.

The Revd Dr Mark Vasey-Saunders is a Church of England priest who is the Academic Tutor at St Hild College in Yorkshire. He oversees the formation of part time and full time Anglican ordinands at St Hild Sheffield and leads modules in Doctrine, Advanced Christian Ethics and Mission  Entrepreneurship. His new book, published by SCM in June this year is entitled Defusing the Sexuality Debate: The Anglican Evangelical Culture War. [1]

The argument of Defusing the Sexuality Debate.

In the introduction to his book Vasey-Saunders writes that the Church of England’s debate about sexuality:

‘….has become destructive, and exerts a profoundly negative influence on all areas of church life, leaving casualties in its wake on both sides. Some have been persecuted. Sone have been excluded from communities in which they were once welcomed and accepted. Some have been driven to despair and have left the church.’ [p.4]

In the light of this fact, the purpose of his book is to try:

‘…to help defuse a debate that has become corrosive to the spiritual health of all those caught up in it, on both sides, by trying to unpick exactly what it is we are arguing about and why it has aroused such passionate intensity’ (p.5) 

He then goes on to identify what he calls the conservative evangelical[2] ‘consensus position’ about sexuality, which he describes as ‘the understanding that the only permissible patterns of sexual life for gay or straight people are heterosexual marriage or abstinence’ (pp.5-6), and to explain that much of what he writes in his book:

‘…. will effectively act to undermine a key position defended by conservative evangelicals: the conviction that adherence to the consensus position represents a first order issue of faith, where disagreement represents unfaithfulness to the gospel. This is deliberate. I believe that this conviction is a major contributor to the current destructive state of debate, preventing genuine engagement with the issues ostensibly being discussed. For both sides the debate has become a nil sum game where they either win or they leave. This in itself would be a good pragmatic reason for challenging its, but I want to make the case that it is also fundamentally mistaken. None of the arguments commonly advanced as to why adherence to the consensus position should be considered a first order issue are compelling, in large part because they all represent a rush to judgement. At present I am not convinced we even know what it is we are taking a stand to protect or to prevent. Similarly, I believe that the pattern of biblical interpretation on which the consensus position is based is far newer, and far less certain, than much rhetoric would suggest, and that the passages on which it is based are considerably more complex to understand than is generally admitted.

None of this means that coming to an understanding of what scripture is saying to us is impossible, or that we do not have the obligation to sit under its judgement. It does not even mean that the consensus position itself is wrong – it may be the best attempt we can make at coming to the truth of scriptural witness. It simply means that discerning what the word of God is saying at this time is difficult, the more so when we may not properly understand the choice before us, and are actively seeking to invalidate the perspectives of those we do not agree with’  (pp.6-7)

Following the Introduction, Vasey-Saunders develops his argument further in five chapters. 

Chapter 1 is entitled ‘Evangelicals talking about sexuality: The creation of the consensus position.’

As its title indicates, in this chapter Vasey-Saunders traces the development of the evangelical consensus position. His conclusion is that:

‘The Evangelical consensus position on sexuality, often presented by conservatives as ‘the tradition of the church’ is in fact of twentieth-century origins. The only way it can be argued that the consensus position is substantially a restatement of earlier tradition or earlier interpretation of scripture is to implicitly assert that the rejection of homophobia is a relatively minor modification of that tradition, and that the traditional pattern of biblical interpretation is irrelevant to the tradition. The consensus position not only rejects homophobia, it also rejects an interpretation of scripture centred on the Sodom narrative and God’s judgement on non-procreative sex as the sin against nature. These are not minor modifications to tradition, but represent a far reaching modernization of that tradition.

It is inarguable that in its current form the consensus position did not exist before the Seventies, and there is no evidence that the pattern of biblical interpretation on which it is based was widely accepted in the Church of England before 1991 with the publication of Issues in Human Sexuality.’ Prior to this point, the understanding of Bailey (that no biblical texts could be seen as having direct relevance to the modern discussion) was still the official position of the Church of England, with Homosexual Relationships[3] concluding in 1979 that ‘The appeal to scripture…. provides us with a rather narrow and somewhat ambiguous base for contemporary Christian teaching.’ As we have seen, the consensus position is neither in line with traditional interpretation of scripture in regard to sexuality, nor in line with the understanding of scripture in pre 1991 Church of England reports. It can only realistically claim to have achieved broad acceptance within the Church of England within the last 30 years.’ (pp.47-48)

Chapter 2 is entitled ‘Evangelicals talking about scripture.’ In this chapter Vasey-Saunders traces ‘some of the history of interpretation of the key biblical passages behind the consensus position’ (p.6)  His conclusion is that:

‘Evangelicals are far from biblical literalists or homophobic bigots blindly parroting unexamined tradition. Twentieth century evangelical biblical interpretation of sexuality represents serious engagement with critical scholarship, respectfully encompasses different interpretations of complex passages, and upholds a doctrine of marriage that is thoroughly modern and radically different from pre-modern understandings. Neither progressive accusations of unreconstructed fundamentalism nor conservative protestations that they are simply setting out the plain truth of scripture can therefore be taken at face value. Most of the key insights underlying evangelical understandings are reliant on scholarship that was carried out well within living memory – in some cases within the last 20 to 30 years. There is little to suggest that interpretation of key passages will not continue to develop as new scholarship is carried out. Very clearly this is modern biblical scholarship addressing modern questions.’

Chapter 3 is entitled ‘Evangelicals talking to evangelicals,’ in it Vasey-Saunders explores ‘the politicized nature’ of the debate about sexuality, ‘tracing the history of how it is become as destructive and intractable as I suggested above.’ (p.6)  Drawing on the thinking of the French writer Rene Girard, he argues that:

‘Discussions around sexuality act as lightning rods for fears and tension around evangelical identity. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century evangelicalism has become steadily more fractured. The anxieties this caused have encouraged the creation of a monstrous other – a gay- liberal conspiracy – in a bid to externalise the threatening differences and bring a new unity. However, the cost of this strategy is high. Individuals can easily get crushed by the political conflict raging around them. This has clearly been the case for high profile figures scapegoated for their unwillingness to entirely follow a party line, who seemed to suggest the possibility of some sort of middle ground. It is also been the case for a significantly greater number of less high profile people, particularly gay Christians, who have essentially become pawns in a political struggle. When the need to acknowledge and guard against the reality of homophobia in church circles is downplayed or denied (as it has been conservative evangelical rhetoric) it is these people who end up bearing the cost.

It is clear now that the fracture lines between conservatives and progressives run through the middle of evangelical groupings as well as between evangelicals and liberals. As the Church of England moves towards some sort of settlement on sexuality, progressives are openly challenging the certainties of the biblical interpretation behind the consensus position, while conservatives are doubling down on the claim that scripture is clear, avoiding debate on contentious passages, and focusing more on strategies for negotiating some sort of split. Division and breakdown of community seems inevitable.’  (pp.132-133)

However, he writes:

‘Apocalypse is not the only possible outcome. There are signs that conservatives are still open to new perspectives, as is shown by the new prominence being given to gay voices that are critical of the church’s homophobic tendencies.’ (p.133)

Chapter 4 is entitled ‘Evangelicals talking about modernity: The question behind the question.’ In this chapter Vasey-Saunders explores ‘the extent to which the sexuality debate is really a proxy war for a deeper conflict over the interpretation of modernity itself’ (p.6)  His conclusion is that:

‘Since the Sixties, evangelicals have been painting themselves a picture of modernity as a monstrous enemy – an anti-culture that is utterly inhospitable to faith and makes living a faithful life impossible. Alongside this, they have been quietly accommodating various strands of modernity, most visibly in their worship and organisational structures, but also less visible areas, including a re framing of sexual morality around the centrality of fulfilling relationships rather than procreation. Growing conflict with more self-consciously progressive Christians has encouraged an increasingly oppositional stance, which denies the possibility of common ground. Despite this, the reality is that conservatives and progressives are both equally natives of modernity, and modernity itself is multi vocal, and by no means as inhospitable to faith as writers like Carson or Trueman suggest.’ (pp.184-185).

Chapter 5 is entitled ‘Advice to a divided church.’  As this title suggests, in this chapter Vasey-Saunders makes some suggestions for positive ways forward in the current Church of England debate over human sexuality.

His first suggestion is that conservatives ‘should stop suggesting that refusal to adhere to the consensus position represents a first order issue of faith.’ (p.189)

His second suggestion is that both side should resist ‘the pressure towards immediate and often suspicious or defensive responses to perceived acts of provocation by the other ‘side.’ (p.193). This, he says, would give ‘space for more moderate voices on both sides to be  heard.’ (p.193)

His third suggestion is that both conservatives and progressives should avoid ‘demonizing modernity.’  (p.193). This is because both conservative and progressive dystopian accounts of modernity, which identify modernity with the approach taken by the other side in the sexuality debate:

‘… represent an oversimplification and denial of the existence of substantial common ground between conservatives and progressives. Both make a genuine conversation with ‘the other side’ impossible. They can be no compromise with the modernity that is an anti-culture and fundamentally opposed to the gospel. Both tend towards the denial of hope and the possibility of redemption and encourage extreme solutions. Both massively reinforce tendencies towards self righteousness and discourage genuine self-awareness.’ (p.195)

His fourth suggestion is that evangelicals need to:

‘… hold our theology a little more humbly, in the  awareness that we might be wrong, and our brothers and sisters in Christ who disagree with us might have seen something we are blind to. It means listening openly to the perspectives of others in the expectation that in so doing we might both discover something new.’ (p.197)

His fifth suggestion is that the complexity of the debate about sexuality needs to be recognized. This means recognizing that:

‘…rather than a simple ethical question with a yes/no answer, the church is in reality engaged in an extended conversation about a variety of interrelated areas of doctrine and practise, as well as an even more divisive debate about the appropriate tools and methodology to employ in this debate (and who should ultimately have the last word in it)…. The inherent complexity of the debate needs to be acknowledged, rather than ignored in the rush to find a resolution. Otherwise, and inevitably, the underlying questions will resurface, still unaddressed, in whatever the next issue might be, making it equally intractable. The dream of a quick resolution allowing everyone to move on, although comforting, is utterly impossible.’ (p.198)

His final suggestion is that we should follow Ephraim Radner in challenging:

‘….the myth that faithfulness to Christ is expressed in separation from our brothers and sisters in the church with the notion that faithfulness to Christ may actually be best expressed in self sacrificially continuing to bear with one another. Romanticising division as an expression of faithfulness maybe never present Protestant temptation, but it is one we can ill afford at present.’ (pp.202-203)

What are we to make of this argument?

Vasey-Saunders has issued a major challenge to conservative evangelicals to dial back both their rhetoric and their certainty in regard to the current Church of England debate about sexuality, and to instead commit themselves to greater humility and openness and to remaining in the church alongside those with whom they disagree come what may. Conservative evangelicals need to take his argument seriously and to think how to respond to it.

However, while it needs to be taken seriously, I do not think that Vasey-Saunders’ argument is persuasive. This is for a number of reasons.

First, contrary to what he says in his introduction, conservative evangelicals, as represented by the Church of England Evangelical Council, are very clear what it is they are taking a stand to protect or to prevent. They are seeking to protect the belief that marriage is between two people of the opposite sex and that the only legitimate place for sexual intercourse is within marriage thus understood. They are seeking to prevent the Church of England moving away from this belief in its teaching and practice.

Secondly, contrary to what he says in chapter 1, the position that conservative evangelicals are seeking to protect is not ‘in fact of twentieth-century origins.’ The belief that marriage is between two people of the opposite sex and that the only legitimate place for sexual intercourse is within marriage thus understood goes all the way back to New Testament times and has been universally held by Christians of all traditions in every generation since. It is only since the 1960s that it has begun to be challenged.

It is true that for much of the history of the Church Christians have supported ecclesiastical and civil penalties for same-sex sexual activity that have been much severe than even the most conservative Christian in this country would support today (which is what Vasey-Saunders means when he says that the Christian tradition has been homophobic). However, this fact is distinct from the belief that same-sex sexual activity is sinful. It is perfectly possible for Christians to share the traditional Christian belief that sex outside marriage (including between two people of the same sex) is profoundly sinful while disagreeing with previous generations of Christians about the penalties that such activity should attract.

A good analogy would be the way that most (if not all) people in Britain today would hold that hanging people for theft is wrong while still sharing the traditional belief that stealing is wrong. The belief that theft is wrong is separate from the belief that people should be hung for it. So it is with the belief that same-sex sexual activity is wrong and the judgement about what is the appropriate response to this wrong doing.

Thirdly, Vasey-Saunders is also wrong when he suggests that the consensus position departs from previous Christian thinking in a major way ‘when it rejects an interpretation of scripture centred on the Sodom narrative and God’s judgement on non-procreative sex as the sin against nature.’  

The traditional rejection of homosexual activity on biblical grounds was not (in spite of the widespread historical use of the term ‘sodomy’) dependent on the story of the judgement of God on Sodom in Genesis 19. This story was seen (as it is in the Bible) as a warning of God’s judgement against such activity, but the belief that such activity was wrong was not solely dependent on this text, but was more widely based on the witness of Scripture as a whole concerning the proper place for sexual activity and the proper end for which sexual activity was created by God. Thus, the fact that conservative evangelicals today would not necessarily make the story of Sodom front and centre of their case for opposing same-sex sexual activity does not mark a significant breach with the traditional biblical case for opposing such activity.

In a similar manner, while it is true that most conservative evangelicals support the use of contraception, this is not contrary to the historic Christian belief that sex should take place in a marital relationship that is open to procreation. As Oliver O’Donovan notes, the problem with the belief that procreation must be in view every time a husband and wife make love is that it wrongly atomises the relationship between a husband and wife. In his words, this idea violates:

‘…. the principle that the sexual life of a married couple should be viewed as a whole, not in terms of its distinct acts of intercourse. Fornication may take the form of a series of one-night stands (for that is its moral corruption, that the sexual act never leads beyond the occasion to establish a permanent bond of loyalty), but married love is entirely different. To break marriage down into a series of disconnected sexual acts is to falsify its true nature. As a whole, then, the married love of any couple should (barring serious reasons to the contrary) be both relationship-building and procreative; the two ends of marriage are held together in the life of sexual partnership which the couple live together. But it is artificial to insist, as Humane Vitae did, that ‘each and every marriage act’ must express the two goods equally.’[4]

To put it another way, conservative evangelicals still adhere to the traditional Christian position that marital sexual activity is intended by God to be both unitive and procreative, but (like other Christian traditions) it holds that not every marital sexual act has to open to procreation.[5]  The ‘modernization’ of the tradition is thus not as major as Vasey-Saunders suggests. The tradition itself is still upheld.

Fourthly, Vasey-Saunders is misleading when he suggests that it is ‘inarguable that in its current form the consensus position did not exist before the Seventies.’  It is true that modern evangelical responses to the acceptance of same-sex sexual relationships began to be produced in the 1970s. However, as previously noted, the basic position that evangelicals have sought to uphold is that one that has traditionally been held by Christians of all traditions since New Testament times.[6]

He is equally misleading when he suggests that Bailey’s view that ‘that no biblical texts could be seen as having direct relevance to the modern discussion’ was the ‘official position’ of the Church of England until 1991. Perusal of Church of England documents from 1955 until 1991 provides no evidence to support this claim. The quotation that he gives from the 1979 report is accurate, but that report gives no evidence that it thinks it is putting forward the church’s official position and the position taken by the report never became accepted as Church of England teaching.

 Furthermore, a wider study of the history of the Church of England shows that what Bailey describes as the conservative evangelical consensus position was the one held by the Church of England throughout its history (for example, it underlies to the marriage service in the Book of Common Prayer and is found in the homily ‘Against Whoredom and Uncleanness’ in the First Book of Homilies). The real story is that this accepted position was challenged from the 1950s onwards following on from the work of Bailey, but in the end the traditional position was re-affirmed in the motion passed by General Synod in 1987 (the ‘Higton motion’) and that motion remains the official legal position of the Church of England to this day. Issues in Human Sexuality is the House of Bishops response to the passing of that motion.

Fifthly, Vasey-Saunders is further misleading when he writes that conservative evangelical scholarship  ‘upholds a doctrine of marriage that is thoroughly modern and radically different from pre-modern understandings.’ On the contrary, the view of marriage taken by conservative evangelicals is simply that set out in the marriage service in the Book of Common Prayer, which in itself was a conservative text reflecting an accepted understanding of marriage which can be traced back through the medieval and patristic periods to the New Testament itself. [7]

Sixthly, Vasey-Saunders is correct when he says that the studies of the biblical texts relating to human sexuality that conservative evangelicals have produced since the 1970s represent ‘modern biblical scholarship addressing modern questions.’ However, it does not follow from this that the conservative evangelical  claim ‘that they are simply setting out the plain truth of scripture’ cannot  ‘be taken at face value.’  

What conservative evangelicals mean by the ‘plain truth of scripture’ is what scripture actually says, as opposed to misleading readings of it. The tools of modern biblical scholarship are a means by use of which what scripture says can be determined as precisely as is humanly possible. The conservative evangelical claim is that their use of these tools shows that what scripture says is what the Christian tradition has always thought it said, namely that God has ordained marriage to be between two people of the opposite sex and that marriage is the only legitimate context for sexual activity. Vasey-Saunders provides no evidence to show that this claim is mistaken, and unless he does so his assertion that conservative evangelicals are wrong to make it remains just that.  

Seventhly, Vasey-Saunders likewise provides no evidence that conservative evangelicals have created a ‘monstrous other’ in order to try to maintain their own internal unity. This is unsurprising because this is not what happened. As someone involved in the events which Vasey-Saunders describes, I can testify that the reality was the opposite. A renewed unity among conservative evangelicals was in fact created by a common realisation that the threat of the Church of England departing from biblical teaching with regard to marriage and sexuality was more important than the matters which divided them.

To use two modern analogies, Vasey-Saunders thinks what happened was like the Argentine junta invading the Falklands in 1982 in order to try to bolster up their political authority at home, whereas in fact what happened was more like the Ukrainians coming together in the face of the Russian invasion in February 2022. To put it another way, conservative evangelicals were not looking for an enemy to fight. The current conflict in the Church of England was not of their choosing.

Eighthly. Vasey-Saunders is correct to note that conservative evangelicals inhabit modernity even while they criticise it. However, what he fails to do justice to is the basic point made by evangelical scholars such as Don Carson and Carl Trueman that while modernity is indeed multivocal the prevailing ethos of modernity:

‘…. encourages us to create our own beliefs and morality, the only rule being that they must resonate with who we feel we really are. The worst thing we can do is to conform to some moral code that is imposed on us from outside – by society, our parents, the church, or whoever else. It is deemed self-evident that any such imposition would undermine our unique identity.

Ultimately, this form of expressive individualism, with each person doing his or her own thing, leads to a form of soft moral relativism: we should not criticise each other’s values because each person’s right is to live as they wish. The only thing we cannot tolerate is intolerance.’ [8]

The reason that conservative evangelicals have felt that Christians need to stand against this prevailing ethos is both because it is theologically wrong, since God did create human beings to be morally autonomous but to live together in the way that he has laid down, and because it has proved to have had seriously damaging real life consequences for individuals and for society as a whole (this is the point made, for example, by Glynn Harrison is his book A Better Story[9])

Finally, with regard to the six suggestions made in chapter five:

• Conservative evangelicals cannot abandon the belief that ‘the consensus position represents a first order issue of faith’ because that is the status it holds in scripture. In scripture un-repented sexual sin brings with it the threat of damnation (1 Corinthians 6:9-11) and therefore the sexuality debate is ultimately about the salvation of people’s souls.
• Vasey-Saunders is right that conservative evangelicals should not be unduly defensive although, given the issues at stake and what has happened in other Anglican jurisdictions,  they are right be cautious about what those on the ‘progressive’ side are seeking to do.
• He is also right to say that they should not demonize modernity in its entirety, or paint a completely dystopian picture of the modern world, although for the reasons previously given they are right to criticise and reject modernity’s prevailing ethos.
• He is right to say that they should cultivate the virtue of humility and be willing to listen to others, although this cannot be at the expense of being willing to compromise on the traditional teachings of the Bible and the Church of England about marriage and sexual ethics.
• While he is right to say that the complexity of the current debate needs to be recognized, he is wrong to suggest that there is not at the heart of the debate ‘a simple ethical question with a yes/no answer.’ At base the debate really is about a simple question – is it right for the Church of England to affirm the godliness of sexual relationships outside marriage between two people of the opposite sex? – answer yes or no.
• He is right that it is wrong to romanticise division. However, he fails to acknowledge that there are situations where it is necessary for Christians to visibly differentiate themselves from false teaching and false teachers. In view of this latter point, Ephraim Radner’s argument that all that a Christian can ever do is remain in their church no matter what absolutist is too.  There can be situations in which division is the least worst option.

Conclusion

Conservative evangelicals should read and wrestle with Vasey-Saunders book, but they should not take it as a reliable guide to what has happened in the past or to their future conduct.

---

[1] Mark Vasey-Saunders, Defusing the Sexuality Debate: The Anglican Evangelical Culture War (London: SCM, 2023). The page references in this review are from the kindle edition.

[2] By ‘conservative evangelicals’ he means those evangelicals aligned with the Church of England Evangelical Council who hold to a conservative position on marriage an human sexuality.

[3] Homosexual Relationships – a Contribution to Discussion was a report from the Church of England’s Board of Social Responsibility.  

[4] Oliver O’Donovan, Begotten or made (Oxford: OUP, 1984), p. 187.

[5] It is important to note that the Roman Catholic tradition’s acceptance of natural methods of birth control means that it too accepts in principle that not every marital sexual act needs to be procreative in intent.

[6] For the evidence for this claim see, for instance, S Donald Fortson and Rolin Grams, Unchanging Witness (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2016).  

[7] For justification of this claim see Chapters 5 and 6 of the CEEC study Glorify God in your Body (London: CCEC, 2018).

[8] Jonathan Grant, Divine Sex (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2015), p.30.

[9] Glynn Harrison, A Better Story (London: IVP, 2017).