Prejudice always seems logical to those who hold, express, and implement it. Often, they have been taught it by parents or other adults they respected. Often, culture and religion have been used to endorse it. Often, the roots of prejudice go deep into the insecurities around identity.

Prejudice is a response to fears; primal fears about safety and survival. To some extent we all hold such fears, but how we are taught to cope with fear differs markedly. Unfortunately some, even from an early age, are taught to be suspicious of, or to blame, those who look, talk, or behave differently from them.

Those ruling a society, in times past and even today, learnt that prejudice can be a tool to keep power in their hands. So, prejudice was used to justify enslavement, subservient roles, and who a society privileged. Ignorance, suspicion, and fear of others were not something to overcome, but to stoke. The rulers set the norms.

The Church has been used, time and again, as a vehicle to confirm and propagate the fears and prejudices of both rulers and ruled. God was co-opted, in ancient texts and even modern tomes, and said to reject whatever, whoever, the Church rejects. Left-handed people were called "the devil's children." People who committed suicide were refused burial within the walls of the churchyard. Mental illness made people different and, therefore, feared and rejected. Divorced persons were refused Holy Communion. Queer people have been, and still are in many places, despised and excluded. And so on and so on.

And time and again people of faith, or none, have rallied – and still rally - against prejudicial practices, policies, and the holy texts used to justify them. Here we, St Luke’s, stand.

Yet prejudice never dies easily or speedily.

I was thinking about this after listening to the sermon last Sunday by Mark Oakley, Dean of Southwark Cathedral, London. It was a deeply personal sermon, and a sermon of protest against recent decisions by the Church of England bishops concerning same-sex marriage, blessings, and ordination. It was also a sermon that received a standing ovation in response. You can hear it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLM_J8YH8Fk

‍I won’t attempt to explain the labyrinthian ways of the English Anglican Church, or the endless commissions and other attempts to keep disparate views within the one church, or the ‘logic’ of those who wish to uphold the ignorance and prejudice that continues to see queer people as a problem. Suffice it to say, if you’re queer and married don’t apply to be a priest. Even if God calls you, the Church won’t. And if you’re already a priest with a same-sex partner, don’t get married. Or you’re likely to get the boot. And if you’d like a blessing on your same-sex marriage, you may find a congregational service where they will fit you in. But it won’t be a service just for you, like a wedding service is. And if you’re queer and not married, but wish to be, don’t expect an Anglican wedding anytime soon. Church weddings are only for heterosexuals.

Now, I might not have got all the nuances right. Probably not. But in essence, this is appeasing the logic of prejudice at the cost of integrity. And the bearers of the cost are, once again, those prejudiced against: the rainbow communities of England. And the consequence for the Church of England is a continued slow regression into public irrelevancy.

Not that our denomination, the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa NZ, is any better. Indeed it's worse. But some of us just follow Jesus and rebel.

Glynn

(Photo: Dean Mark Oakley. From Southwark Cathedral website)