Following a considerable amount of criticism on social media for having declared its support for the Evangelical Alliance’s ten affirmations on human sexuality, the trustees of the Church of England’s Church Pastoral Aid Society (CPAS) issued a clarificatory statement on 11 January this 12 months by which they declared, amongst other things, that ‘CPAS is against conversion therapy, and seeks to uphold the best standards of safeguarding and pastoral best practice.’
This declaration by the CPAS trustees was an try and distance themselves from number eight of the Evangelical Alliance’s affirmations which states:
“We welcome and support the work of those individuals and organisations who responsibly seek to assist Christians who experience same-sex attraction as in conflict with their commitment to live in accordance with biblical teaching. This assistance will involve counsel and pastoral support to live a chaste life and, as a part of this process, some may seek and experience changes within the strength or direction of their same-sex attractions.”
The implication of the CPAS trustees distancing themselves from this affirmation would appear to be that they don’t consider that it’s ever right for people, or organisations reminiscent of the Core Issues Trust, or for that matter churches, to supply counselling or other types of pastoral support to “help Christians who experience same-sex attraction as in conflict with their commitment to live in accordance with biblical teaching”.
When one stops to give it some thought, it is a very odd position for the CPAS trustees to carry. They have made it clear that as an Evangelical organisation CPAS still adheres to the normal Christian belief that same-sex sexual relationships are contrary to the desire of God as revealed in Scripture. Nevertheless, they seem like saying that it’s incorrect to attempt to help people who find themselves being tempted to act against God’s will on this regard.
Two examples illustrate the issues with this approach.
The first example is a married man who’s tempted to cheat on his wife by engaging in an affair with one other man.
The second example is a teenage girl who’s being encouraged by friends at college to experiment with lesbian sexual intercourse.
When people come to their church leaders and say that they need assist in remaining faithful to their marriage, or in knowing why and the way they need to reject the pressure from their friends at college, are church leaders really alleged to simply tell them that they’re on their very own because no help might be forthcoming? If the temptations in query concerned heterosexual sex, help can be offered with no questions asked. So why should it not be the identical when the difficulty concerns homosexuality?
The first answer to this query is that the Church of England’s General Synod passed a motion in 2017 rejecting conversion therapy. The motion in query runs as follows:
“That this Synod: (a) endorse the Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy within the UK of November 2015, signed by The Royal College of Psychiatrists and others, that the practice of gay conversion therapy has no place in the trendy world, is unethical, potentially harmful and never supported by evidence; and three (b) call upon the Church to be sensitive to, and to hearken to, contemporary expressions of gender identity; (c) and call on the federal government to ban the practice of Conversion Therapy.”
One can understand the CPAS trustees’ reluctance to disregard a General Synod motion. However, that can’t be the top of the matter because that Church of England holds that church councils may err (Article XXI) and so the query that needs to be asked is whether or not or not the General Synod erred when it passed the 2017 motion.
Those who hold that General Synod was right to pass this motion argue that conversion therapy needs to be banned due to harm that it involves. This is the position recommend, for instance, by the then Bishop of Manchester, David Walker by which he argues that there’s ‘an enormous pile of evidence’ that every one types of conversion therapy cause harm and that due to this fact the federal government should simply get on and ban the practice completely.
It follows, due to this fact, that the second answer to the query why church leaders should say ‘no’ to offering help to those scuffling with same-sex sexual temptation is since the evidence shows that any try and provide such help can be harmful to the people concerned.
However, the evidence shows no such thing.
This is a degree that’s made clear, for instance, by Rosaria Butterfield, the previous lesbian academic whose conversion to Christianity is recorded in her book Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. In an article published on her website last 12 months Butterfield explains the explanations for retracting her previously stated opposition to conversion therapy as follows:
“I falsely believed that Reparative Therapy and Conversion Therapy were the identical things and that they harmed people by making undeliverable guarantees and blaming parents for his or her kid’s problems. I falsely believed that the darkest days of mental health—think ‘electroshock therapy’—fell under the umbrella term ‘conversion therapy’.
“When I dismissed Reparative Therapy as harmful, I used to be running roughshod with overgeneralizations and failing to tell apart ‘hurt’ from ‘harm.’ The game-changer for me was reading the work of Dr. Andre Van Mol, a California family physician.
“His article within the Christian Medical and Dental Association online journal, ‘Even Failed Therapy for Undesired Same-Sex Sexuality Results in No Harm,’ eased my concerns. Highlighting data that SOCE (Sexual Orientation Change Efforts) incurs no harm even when the patient doesn’t meet intended goals, this current study follows up on a 2021 study showing sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) reduce suicidality. This article put my concerns to rest.”
Furthermore, from a Christian perspective what’s harmful to human beings is anything that stops them from living in the way in which that God created them to live. For example, it’s harmful to deprive people of food, because God has created human beings as biological organisms who need food with the intention to live in any respect. For one other example, it’s harmful to deprive people of education, because this can prevent the complete development of the mental capacities that God has given them.
If we extend this understanding of harm to the problems of sexual identity and behavior, we discover that the witness of each nature and Scripture (Genesis 1:26-28) is that human beings have been created by God in two sexes, female and male, with the members of those two sexes being differentiated biologically by the indisputable fact that their bodies are ordered towards the performance of various roles in sexual reproduction and within the nurture of kids once they’ve been born. Furthermore, Scripture teaches us that God has instituted marriage between a person and a lady because the context for sexual activity and for the begetting and raising of kids (Genesis 2: 18-25).
If God has created human beings in this fashion, it follows that it’s harmful for human beings to live in a way that contradicts this fact. It is harmful for a person to live as if he was a lady or vice versa, or for a person or woman to say some form of different sexual identity. It can also be harmful for a person, or a lady, to have sex outside marriage, either with a member of the other sex, or with a member of the identical sex.
As a results of the sinful disorder that exists in all human beings as a consequence of the riot against God that took place in the beginning of human history and the idolatry that has been the fruit of this riot (Genesis 3:1-14, Romans 1:18-32), there are individuals who desire to live in these harmful ways. In this example, Christian take care of others requires that we seek to assist those for whom that is the case, to manage their desires so that they could live in the way in which God created them to live.
Such assistance will take the shape of teaching, prayer, counselling and general pastoral support, which is obtainable ‘responsibly’ within the sense of not subjecting them to any type of coercion, psychological manipulation, or physical violence, and in addition not offering any promise that God will immediately, totally, or permanently, deliver them from any form of same-sex sexual desire, something that neither Scripture nor experience suggests will necessarily be the case.
Ironically, due to this fact, by distancing themselves from what is alleged within the Evangelical Alliance’s eighth affirmation the CPAS trustees are literally increasing the opportunity of harm by implicitly suggesting that Christian individuals and organizations shouldn’t offer people help to live in the way in which God created them to live.
A final difficulty with the CPAS statement is its timing. At the moment there are attempts being made each in Scotland and within the Westminster Parliament in London to make ‘conversion therapy’ a criminal offence. As the web site ‘Let us pray’ explains, within the proposed laws:
“Conversion therapy is a large umbrella term chosen by LGBT campaigners. It covers grotesque illegal acts reminiscent of corrective rape an abusive quack medical practises like electric shock ‘therapy.’ But the campaigners wish to go much further. They say: ‘Any type of… persuading someone to vary their sexual… behaviour… or gender identity needs to be illegal.”
As they note, campaigners are calling for even basic Christian practices reminiscent of preaching, praying, and even talking with one’s children, to come back under the conversion therapy ban. For example, they quote the next statements from anti-conversion therapy campaigners:
- Pete Byrne, “Some [politicians] say that churches offering pastoral care or sitting down and talking and preaching to people about their lifestyle doesn’t constitute conversion therapy. But I’m sorry, it does.”
- Jayne Ozanne, “I might strongly refute that ‘gentle non-coercive prayer’ needs to be allowed. All prayer that seeks to vary or suppress someone’s innate sexuality or gender identity is deeply damaging and causes immeasurable harm.”
- Tiernan Martin, “Loads of [conversion therapy] is just talking to a spiritual leader, reminiscent of a priest or a pastor. It’s individuals who come out to their parents who then tell them they should seek spiritual guidance and support.”
What we see in these quotations is a serious attack on the liberty of Christians to practise their faith regardless of this freedom being guaranteed by Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights to which the United Kingdom is a signatory. Many Christians, understanding what’s at stake, are campaigning hard against what’s being proposed, but each time that a Christian body like CPAS rejects ‘conversion therapy’ their efforts are undermined. The CPAS trustees have to reassess.
Martin Davie is a lay Anglican theologian and Associate Tutor in Doctrine at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.
