Wednesday 7 May 2014

Cascade Conversation

This is my first ever blog post.  I've thought about blogging before but concluded there was no shortage of talented and creative bloggers in the world and I had little confidence I had much original or distinctive to contribute.  For good or ill, last week, that changed.

In March, I was asked if I would be part of a group from the Episcopal Diocese of Edinburgh participating in the Scottish Episcopal Church's (SEC) Cascade Conversation in Pitlochry on how  the SEC should respond to the recent legislation enabling same sex couples to marry.  I didn't immediately say yes.

As a partnered gay man, 'out' for over twenty-five years, an active member of St John's, Princes Street, Edinburgh for nearly half that time and with some experience of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) politics and policy, not to mention a fondness of chatting, you might think I'd be a shoe-in for something like this.  So why the hesitation?

Well, for starters, this is a big, emotional conversation for the Church and I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to be in the middle of it.  It's been some years since I was actively engaged with LGBT issues and during that time, I've grown to like my sexual orientation being simply one facet of my identity and not necessarily a very important one.  At St John's, where I have felt at home and affirmed pretty much from the moment I started going, the fact I sing tenor, have a degree of administrative competence and can bake a decent spelt loaf have all been far more important than my partner's gender.

Also, besides being a big, emotional conversation for the Church, I also knew this would be a big, emotional conversation for me.  Whilst readily acknowledging that it's not for everyone, I want to get married.  And I want to get married in the Church I know and love, in front of friends and family, amidst the community of which I'm a part and with my choir colleagues singing their hearts out from the choir stalls I usually inhabit on a Sunday.  For someone who likes to be calm, rational and a bit detached when debating an issue I suspected, and indeed was warned, that this conversation would be intense and emotionally draining and I wasn't sure I was up for it.

But after a few days' reflection, I agreed.  As I thought it through, I realised that my detachment from LGBT activism and increase in church involvement had coincided pretty much exactly and something about this nagged at me.  Also, for this conversation to be effective and have any integrity, there had to be LGBT voices in the mix.  Though I was pretty certain that were I to go I wouldn't be the only LGBT voice there, I concluded the only way I could be entirely confident would be to go myself.

In the interest's of full disclosure, I ought to add that Pitlochry's proximity to the retail palace that is House of Bruar might have played a minor influencing role.

So, last Tuesday, along with around 59 other members of the SEC, I pitched up in Pitlochry with a fair degree of nervous apprehension - a state of mind it was later confirmed shared by pretty much everyone.  The process for the two days had been very carefully crafted.  It centred around collective listening to conversations between a number of invited contributors, including speakers from other denominations across the UK, which fed into facilitated conversations within a small group that we stayed with over the two days.  These conversations were regularly interspersed with opportunities for collective worship.  All this happened in the same, big room.

We started with the kind of scene-setting and ice-breaker activity which is pretty typical in my experience of this kind of event.  We were invited to endorse a proposed working agreement - mutual respect, owning contributions, non-interruption, Chatham House rule - principles of that nature.  There was some divergence of opinion on a proposal that participants refrain from engaging in social media about the two-day conversation until it concluded - which was the position ultimately adopted.  Some felt that using social media would contribute to a more transparent process whilst others felt it could inhibit the conversation.  As with the big issue we were to discuss, I found myself wondering how a conversation on the topic would go in ten years' time but that's perhaps a topic for a different post.

Preliminaries over, we started to engage with the substantive topic and as my group did the kind of round table introduction with which many will be familiar, for the first time in a good number of years, I essentially outed myself to a group of strangers.  Now, that's not the big deal it was twenty-five years ago when I first started doing it but when you're about to embark on a fundamental discussion of attitudes to same sex relationships, knowing that bit of information will colour how others hear your contribution, positively or negatively, it's still something.  And I have to say, this small act of courage, maybe even faith, was treated with a level of respect and positive regard that imbued all that followed - however difficult - with an affirming quality I had not been anticipating.  Which takes me to the conversation or, rather, conversations themselves.  They were not easy. 

My sense was that we started slowly and very cautiously, becoming more challenging and searching as the trust between the parties to the conversation grew.  The searching quality of conversation cut both ways and proved wide-ranging.  We covered the meaning or interpretation of specific bible passages, general attitudes to same sex relationships and marriage – same sex or otherwise, the significance of any position the SEC might take relative to the wider Anglican Communion, frustration that this issue was taking up so much time and and energy and how that was perceived by wider society, the Church's historic position (ancient and recent) and its impact on LGBT people, the organisational process for making any changes to the SEC's current position and much more besides.  In many ways though, the how of the discussion was more important than the what.

I deeply appreciated the manner in which people in a very different place to me on this issue were willing to engage with my story and aspirations and, it seemed to me, sincerely seek to reconcile their desire to live up to the ideal of Christ's love with their understanding, interpretation, experience (I'm not sure which word is most apt) of scripture that at least limits if not outright prohibits recognition of same sex relationships.  In return, no matter how gently or reluctantly expressed, it was no easy thing for me to hear someone's articulation of their understanding/ interpretation/experience of scripture that no matter how diligently I might seek to follow the Christian model of a romantic and sexual relationship in my life, for as long as that expression was in the context of a relationship with another man, I could only ever be living in sin.  Nor, I dare say, an easy thing to say in the context of this conversation.  But this kind of intellectually engaging and emotionally demanding exchange is, I think, exactly where the Church's conversation needs to be and my experience of the Cascade format was that it allowed this to happen.

Where this process will ultimately take the SEC, I am not honestly sure.  This conversation was, for me, a very good start but the number of possible conclusions is limited and I fear the understanding and respect evident over these two days may break down as it becomes clearer which option or options become more or less likely.  But that is effectively an echo of the apprehension I and others felt going into the Cascade conversation and, if a way can be found of disagreeing agreeably - as Malcolm Round puts it in his eloquent blog post on this same topic - I think the Cascade model has a good chance of succeeding.

So, what next?  The idea is that this conversation should now cascade throughout the SEC and, if the attitude of the Edinburgh Diocese participants is anything to go by, there are 60 advocates convinced of the importance of this as a process and keen to take it forward.  The different area participants and their Bishops will need to work out the logistics of how this will happen in their particular Diocese.  Once I know how this might work within the Diocese of Edinburgh, I'll post that here.

For now, I will simply offer prayerful thanks – to those who made last week happen, for the opportunity to meet new people and re-establish contact with people I'd met before and for the privilege of talking to people with whom I agreed and – just possibly even more – of talking to people with whom I did not.  

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