The Church of England has published a recent document reflecting on the federal government’s plans to ban so-called conversion therapy.
The document was commissioned as a part of the Church of England’s Living in Love and Faith (LLF) strategy of dialogue and discernment around the problems of marriage, relationships, sexuality and identity.
The paper, published this week on the request of the House of Bishops, highlights the shortage of an agreed definition on what constitutes harmful conversion therapy, and suggests that this should be clearly distinguished from conversion practices.
“The fluidity of the definition, nonetheless, is problematic and has raised concerns about where boundaries are, particularly in relation to criminalisation,” it says.
It states that “some care must be taken” in defining the concept of “suppression” of sexuality or identity and “what it could actually (and can’t) be applied to, and the way self-regulation and decisions of certain ways of life could be positive moderately than harmful”.
The document warns against making a “chill factor” where “legitimate therapeutic practitioners are deterred from operating resulting from a fear that they may mistakenly be perceived as breaching the ban”.
“While churches don’t offer therapy per se, the identical concerns apply to pastoral care, which is subject to similar dynamics,” it reads.
Elsewhere the paper calls for a distinction to be made between harm and taking offence.
“This matters particularly within the context of an increasingly pluralistic society with multiple religious groups whose dissenting views could risk being suppressed by being termed harmful, moderately than simply offensive,” it continues.
“An appropriately free society which inspires freedom of belief, will make space for beliefs that usually are not universally shared and is likely to be termed offensive, as long as they usually are not used to cause actual harm.
“Therefore, the query here isn’t simply of the content of individuals’s beliefs, or their intention, but in regards to the dynamics of power.”
The Church of England’s parliamentary body, the General Synod, formally voted to call on the federal government to ban conversion therapy in July 2017.
The paper says that there isn’t a certainty that prayer won’t be banned, despite government assurances, and that the query for churches is whether or not their practices of prayer “remain demonstrably non-coercive”.
