The Archbishop of Canterbury resorted to Alastair Campbell’s own communications techniques when trying to explain what is going on in the Church of England over the divisive issue of same-sex marriage.
Appearing on The Rest is Politics podcast this week, Justin Welby told Tony Blair’s old spin doctor that he now has a “better answer” on gay sex and marriage than he did seven years ago, when he told Campbell he was “copping out”.
And certainly it is an answer more in line with what Campbell wants to hear, telling him that “where we’ve come to” is that straight or gay relationships are now fine, as long as they’re “committed”, by which he means a “marriage or civil partnership”.
Welby goes on to claim that he and a “majority” of bishops have “put forward a proposal” whereby people “who have been through a civil partnership or a same-sex marriage” ceremony “should be able to come along to… a church, and have a service of prayer and blessing for them in their lives together”.
There’s just one problem with these statements: not one of them is an accurate reflection of Welby’s latest proposals on same-sex relationships. In fact, the proposal that he and the other bishops have set out does not signal they approve of sex outside heterosexual marriage – contradicting what he told Campbell. Neither does it allow for special services for same-sex couples who have got married – again, the opposite of what he said. For one reason or another, Welby has managed to give Campbell and his listeners the impression that the proposed reforms are far more radical than they are.
Last November the latest version of the bishops’ proposals were placed before General Synod, the church’s governing body, and they included a clear statement that “the Church’s doctrine remains” unchanged. “We have been clear that we have no intention of changing that doctrine,” the bishops wrote. “We also note that the Church’s teaching on sexual relations has been treated as being part of the Church’s doctrine of marriage. We are not proposing to change that teaching.”
This is completely at odds with what Welby said on The Rest is Politics, namely that where he and the bishops have now “come to” is that sex in “committed” relationships, whether “straight or gay” is now fine. Did Welby misspeak under pressure? It seems unlikely. Returning to Campbell to discuss this topic was clearly part of the point of going on the podcast and he would have been prepared for his questions. Plus, he gave a similar answer on another recent occasion.
Welby also claimed that under his proposals, “where people have been through a civil partnership or a same-sex marriage… they should be able to come along to… a church and have a service of prayer and blessing for them in their lives together”.
But this, too, is at odds with what the bishops’ actual proposals contain. The proposal presented to General Synod in November is at pains to state that it “intentionally does not differentiate between couples who have and who have not entered into a civil same-sex marriage”. This is because the new prayers (known as ‘Prayers of Love and Faith’ or PLF) “are not being offered to be used as a thanksgiving for marriage or a service of prayer and dedication after civil marriage and do not refer to, or take account of, a couple’s civil marital status”.
In other words, the proposed new services may not refer in any way to the fact that the couple have recently got married – even though that is the reason people want the services in the first place.
What’s more, it’s not even true that the service may be “for” the couple, as Welby tells Campbell. Dancing on the head of a pin to avoid having to go through the full church process of introducing contentious new liturgy, the bishops told the synod that the new prayers (which are definitely not to mark the marriage, honest) may only be included as part of an ordinary extra service and not be a special service for the couple akin to a wedding blessing.
You may marvel at the ingenuity of Church of England bishops, who have managed to try to provide a service to bless same-sex marriages by proposing a service which cannot even mention the fact that the couple are married, may not endorse their relationship and may not even say that it is a service “for” the couple. But, constrained by existing church doctrine and unable to change it (the bishops don’t have the votes), they daren’t go any further.
Why then is Welby giving Alastair Campbell the impression that the changes are much more liberal than they really are? Is he just trying to impress the Rest is Politics audience, or is there something more going on?
Most likely, what he has told Campbell – that the C of E is poised to approve same-sex relationships and hold services of blessing after same-sex marriage, neither of which is true – is much closer to what he and the bishops truly want their proposal to be. It’s what they dearly wish they were about to achieve. But they have been unable to deliver that. So instead they have proposed something much weaker: an ordinary extra service, which may not say it is for the couple or mention they are married and which may not express approval of or formally bless their relationship.
You may wonder what the point of it is then. But in reality the expectation from those on both sides of the issue is that the services will in practice do all the things they are not technically allowed to do: they will be presented as services for the blessing of a same-sex marriage and be treated as such by all involved.
This may be exactly what Welby and the bishops want to happen. They want their modest proposals to be misused in this way in churches, as that is what they really wanted to happen in the first place (at least as long as actual same-sex marriage in church is off the table).
Welby’s mischaracterisation of the new services to Campbell is then most likely a manifestation of this wish for the services to be used well beyond the formal constraints technically imposed on them, constraints which Welby and a majority of the bishops don’t really agree with and wish they had the votes to change.
Neither side of the debate is happy with this state of affairs. Liberals are unhappy that if they use the services in the way they want to – the way that Welby is indicating by his comments to Campbell he is actually expecting them to be used – then they will technically be doing so contrary to what the rules around the services say. They’ve been doing this unauthorised for years anyway; what they were after is for such services to be put on a proper, legitimate footing. But this is not what they’ve got.
Conservatives of course are unhappy that services for same-sex couples are being rammed through in a way that technically may not change the church’s doctrine of marriage but which everyone knows will be used as though the doctrine has changed. Welby’s comments feed straight into this suspicion as they confirm that this is exactly what he and the bishops expect and even intend to happen. They want the public to think these are services of blessing for same-sex marriages, even though in order to comply with church doctrine and get them through Synod (and past the lawyers) technically they have had to characterise them as nothing of the sort.
Rev. Dr. Andrew Goddard, who has served on official working groups reviewing the church’s teaching on same-sex relationships, says that Welby’s characterisation of the reforms to Campbell is “either false or is proof that the argument which was presented to Synod to justify introducing ‘standalone services’ next year… was duplicitous”.
Goddard, a proponent of keeping the church’s teaching on marriage as it is, has demanded an urgent “apology and correction” from Welby. He speaks of “the widespread erosion of trust and growing sense of disbelief, betrayal, deception, anger and despair now felt across much of the Church of England” in relation to the Archbishop and the process he is overseeing.
Welby needs to take care that he doesn’t undermine the trust of all sides in this debate, which is already low. Wherever you stand on the underlying issues, no one wants an Archbishop of Canterbury you can’t trust because he says one thing to Alastair Campbell and another in church councils. No one wants an Archbishop – supposedly a Christian role model – who acts like an underhand politician, twisting truths to get a bill through Parliament and telling the public what they want to hear. Justin Welby might impress Tony Blair’s old spin doctor with his new lines, but he’s impressing nobody else.
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Is it enough to call out the intimidation tactics of the woke mob? Or is it time to push them back.
I’ve always found that bullies don’t stop until you hit them back. Hard.
Lefties really are sad, hate-filled, self-loathing individuals.
No that’s far too nice about them, they are bigoted, controlling, human hating ppl.
Who have developed their thought processes, for what they are, from the state education system that this school is showing up as total garbage.
Who wants to bet that the people making the complaint have never heard or read a word Jordan Peterson has ever said? That is the worst part of this. They’ve just been told he’s a bad person, and off they go like a pack of brainwashed zombies to rip him to shreds.
I’d consider it an honour to meet him, a brave man who appears to care a lot more for children and their future than some parents do.
And the least said about that breast-fetish man in Canada who is taking the proverbial the better. I can’t wait to see a woman claim to be a transgender man and show up in a school with a similar appendage the size of a baseball bat in her trousers, standing to attention. Inclusivity, right?
Indeed. I think some in the “woke army” are eager to show their loyalty and happy to seize upon a hate figure but have no idea what he actually says or does or stands for. Others who are more thoughtful possibly have an inkling that he’s not Literally Hitler but are too afraid to say this or think this for fear of being denounced for heresy. The puppet masters know Peterson isn’t Literally Hitler but are happy to perpetuate this image of him because he’s articulate, smart, has relevant qualifications, big balls and a huge following. They fear him.
The same is true in a less vehement, English, fashion, for Peter Hitchens. People think he’s some extreme right winger whereas in fact his views are very moderate. The number of times I’ve read posts like “I usually disagree with Hitchens but this time he’s spot on” is amazing – especially when the post regards Hitchens putting forward his core beliefs.
In my experience, ethnic minority people (such as this headmistress) are keen followers of Jordan Peterson and quote him approvingly. “Left-wing” people who want to keep ethnic minorities down oppose Jordan Peterson. His life planning tool has been shown to be particularly effective for ethnic minorities.
I would be fairly certain that one of the teachers at the school, with an axe to grind against this clearly successful headmistress, did the reporting.
Where is the hate in this? I do not recognise anything as “hate crime,” it is just an empty basket in to which any perceived ‘hurt’ can be dumped.
Anyway, whatever hate there is clearly lies with those doing the reporting. Wherever they are employed they should be dismissed immediately.
FFS!
Maybe an “activist” parent who, in typical hypocritical style, wants the benefit of a good education for their offspring but complains from the anonymity of their keyboard?
Absolutely, HP. The real hate crime – if hate can be a crime – is the action of the one reporting on the headmistress. There’s the hate right there.
They want her sacked? From the school she founded? How could that work?
But..
Kayla Lemiuex, the Canadian teacher, is brave, whereas Peterson is a coward. Kayla has found the confidence to express their authentic self and share their inner beauty with the world, despite the bullying and belittling they face from those who fear it more than anything else.
On the other hand, Jordan Peterson seeks to maintain and bolster the system that would crush people like Lemiuex in order to maintain the patriarchal white power structure that has kept us all scared, oppressed and complicit for centuries, and made him rich and influential. His ‘freedom of speech’ is a freedom to drip poison into the ears of impressionable children; to further the conditioning already imposed on them from systemically racist and cis-bigoted institutions (including their parents, often unknowingly), and impose his fascism. He needs to be stopped, at any cost, along with people like him.
#bekind. #dobetter.
In order to counter this mindset, it’s important to understand what it’s built on, and why it sees someone like Jordan Peterson as such a threat.
Its appeal is emotional, and works like any ideological indoctrination. It seeks to leverage and amplify any existing, reasonable feelings of unfairness in the societal status quo, and allow potential adherents to ascribe any failings, feelings of dissatisfaction and unhappiness to it.
It then nurtures a mindset of helplessness by defining victimhood as a desirable state, offering social approval, affirmation and kudos for displays of victimhood (or failing this, displays of sympathy with the victimhood of others in a way that would nurture this status). It helps that the cost of this sort of virtue signalling is very low.
It then cleans up by presenting membership of the ideologically united group as the solution, both replacing the loss of connection to the social system that has been rejected with a sense of belonging to a new group, and restoring a sense of agency and potency by offering status in the group as payment for advocating this mindset to others.
Peterson represents a threat, because he knows how to play the game on a similar emotional level. He understands that it would be useless to just point out to lay members that they’ve succumbed to a cult mentality when from their point of view, his is the cult. He knows it would be hopeless to point to the loss of a sense of proportion, when this sense is the first thing to be lost in a deliberately induced emotionally heightened state. He knows that cults will most enthusiastically court true victims of unfairness to use as beacons and totems for lay members, imbuing them with an impenetrable layer of sanctity, so they can have some grain of justification for their wider mission.
Instead he uses a different sort of affirmation whose locus isn’t in the group, but in the self, in terms of focus on self-determination, agency and resilience; pointing to self esteem as the solution to unfairness and unhappiness. This is why he’s so despised – he’s right over the target.
Perhaps if we can understand, like Peterson, that this isn’t a war of values, but a war on self-esteem, we might understand better how to deal with it.