The Bishop of Oxford: ‘The Church is seen as unjust because of its treatment of LGBTQ+ people’

Outspoken Anglican bishops with radical ideas were once familiar figures in our national life – Robert Runcie, David Jenkins and, more recently, Rowan Williams. Of late, though, they have kept a lower profile, resulting in an impression, says Bishop Steven Croft of Oxford, that he and his colleagues are “uniformly conservative”.

In recent weeks, though, he has been doing his very best to prove that the opposite is true. As a senior figure in the hierarchy with a seat in the House of Lords, his newly published booklet, Together in Love and Faith, has caused a storm both within and outside Church circles.

It makes a headline-grabbing and impassioned appeal for his fellow believers to abandon the practice of centuries and embrace same-sex marriage – for both clergy and congregations. This is, he tells me, “a crucial issue” for his Church and for its very survival at a time when newly released figures from the 2021 census show the number of Christians in this country has fallen below 50 per cent for the first time since the Dark Ages.

It is also one, he suggests, that “distracts” from the vital day-to-day work the Church does in society. To make the point, he has suggested we meet at St Giles, a beautiful 13th century church and local landmark in Oxford city centre that today houses a vibrant project close to his heart, offering support and counselling to the homeless and those in unsuitable accommodation.

Sixty-five-year-old Bishop Steven doesn’t stand on ceremony. Tall, gentle of manner and softly spoken, he is an unlikely campaigner. Yet he has deliberately and very publicly thrown down a challenge to his Church.

On December 12 he will meet with his fellow bishops in the first of two gatherings to decide what they collectively plan to recommend on same-sex relationships to General Synod – the Church of England’s decision-making body – when it meets in February. Whether or not to affirm the lifelong commitment of same-sex couples has repeatedly been debated in the Church and deeply divides Anglicans.

“I have been a bishop for 14 years and in that time we have had three different processes to look at same-sex relationships, the most recent in 2017 which brought a report to General Synod, saying we ought to be kind but not make any change to our practice.” Even this mild proposal was rejected by two of the three houses in the General Synod (the bishops, clergy and laity sit separately) and so the ban on “gay weddings” remains firmly in place. Yet in the background many individual vicars are quietly ignoring the rules and going ahead with such services.

In their own lives, those in clerical ranks who have entered into civil partnerships with their long-standing same-sex partners are allowed to continue in post, but only on condition that they live celibate lives. “That is deeply challenging for their relationships,” suggests the bishop, “and deeply unaffirming for them as people.”

To continue to delay and fudge, Bishop Steven believes, will do profound damage to the Church of England. “In terms of its relationship with the nation, it is causing a dislocation between church law and the law of the land, between church practice and the practice in society. And that can’t go on.”

There is an implicit “or else” as he speaks. What will happen if the Church doesn’t agree to tackle the dislocation he highlights? “I wouldn’t say that the Church would be finished, but if the stalemate continues, it will hurt the relationship between the Church and society”. We are, he warns, warming to his theme, at a “cultural crossroads”. “The prevailing view I come across in society now is that the Church is seen as unjust because of its treatment of LGBTQ+ people. That is the deepest thing of concern when we are meant to be about justice.”

Is it a make or break moment for his ministry, and for the Church of England? “It is my calling to keep pushing, so it won’t be make or break for me, but for the Church this is a really serious moment. There is a great deal at stake over the next few months. We risk being seen as irrelevant.”

His language is simple and direct, as befits his background as a plain-speaking northerner, born and bred in Halifax. His family were not regular churchgoers, but he was sent to Sunday School. As a result, aged 15, he went along to a youth weekend run by the local diocese. “The faith of those around me,” he has written, “became my own and I had a deep sense of God’s call in my life.”

He became part of the down-to-earth, no-bells-and-smells Low Church Evangelical wing of Anglicanism, fiercely resistant to updating core doctrines in line with changing mores in society. And it is that background that makes him such a powerful supporter of endorsing gay relationships and same-sex marriage compared with more liberal fellow bishops.

“I write,” he begins in his much-commented-upon booklet, “as someone who has changed their mind on these issues, very slowly (with hindsight too slowly) moving from a position where I found it difficult to accept the blessing of same-sex partnerships and marriage… I am sorry that my own views were slow to change and that my actions, and lack of action, have caused genuine hurt, disagreement and pain.”

His previous position, he tells me, should be seen in the context of him having joined the Evangelical wing and then gone forward for ordination (after gaining a theology degree at Oxford University). Croft worked as a priest first in Enfield, north London, then back in Halifax, in a context where, he recalls, he encountered very few gay couples because they were not made welcome in Evangelical circles.

“It was the kind of churches I moved in,” he says. “It was only really when I became a bishop [in Sheffield in 2008 before being promoted in 2016 to Oxford] that I came across a significant number of gay couples and became much more aware of how difficult they were finding it to live with the Church’s position.”

He recalls, in particular, a priest who came to see him as his bishop. “He wanted to tell me about his intention to get married, already being in a civil partnership.” It was an encounter that left a lasting impression, almost a Road-to-Damascus moment. “As he talked, I realised that we were about the same age. Everything he talked about his relationship with his partner was deeply resonant of my relationship with Ann, my wife. We’ve been married over 40 years, and he had been with his partner for 40 years. It just seemed powerful and helped me recognise the good things that are there in so many same-sex relationships. I don’t know why I had been so slow to hear that.”

Croft’s family life – he has two sons, two daughters and eight grandchildren – is central to who he is and he refers to it often. His wife shares his religious beliefs and has been very involved, wherever his ministry has taken them, with mother-and toddler groups, most recently in Oxford at a church in Kidlington.

One reason why he has taken such a stand on same-sex relationships is that he is now acutely conscious of how out of step the Church has become on this question with those it serves. “The more society has moved to be supportive of gay relationships, the harder it has been for gay people to deal with the attitude of their Church. Society and Church have moved apart.”

His overriding mission now is to bring them closer together again. His proposals include, as well as the removal of all restrictions on same-sex marriage, some sort of mechanism whereby that minority of Anglicans who disagree with such a change because they uphold a more traditional view of sexuality and marriage can remain within the fold.

It doesn’t have to be a choice, he is convinced, between the traditionalists leaving the Church because they believe that gay sex is sinful – a position agreed by the 1998 Lambeth meeting of the world’s Anglican bishops and repeated this summer by Archbishop Justin Welby – and LGBTQ+ members, their families and their allies, giving up on the Church in despair at what they perceive as its homophobia.

“There is prejudice, of course, in all of us about many different things, but having spent many hours conversing with those who hold to traditional views out of deep sincerity of conscience, I don’t think it is all prejudice. And I don’t think the Church of England is able to, or should, de-church people in order to include others.”

One way to keep both sides within the fold, he hopes, might be to replicate the arrangements made when the Church allowed the ordination of women priests in 1994. Those clergy and parishes that felt they could not support the measure, or work under a bishop who did – and more recently under a female bishop – were allowed to opt out of the usual hierarchical structure and place themselves under the authority of a like-minded “flying bishop”. They became, in some respects, a church within a church.

The verdict on the success of that system is mixed almost 30 years on: 2020 data, published recently, shows that fewer than one in three paid Anglican clergy are women, despite more women than men (55 per cent to 45 per cent) having trained for ministry over the same period. Martine Oborne, chair of Watch (Women and the Church) describes the current opt-out system as “institutionalised discrimination”.

“No system is perfect,” the bishop concedes, “but it is much better to have a good number of women bishops now, and for us to be working it out in progress – though I really regret it when women bishops come up against misogyny.”

The alternative, he argues, is just not feasible if the Church is to have a future. “If we were to wait until the vast majority in the Church of England made the same journey as I have in relation to same-sex relationships, we’d lose a lot more people than we have already lost. We have to learn to live with a diversity of views about same-sex relationships.”

So far only one diocesan bishop, John Inge of Worcester, has backed Bishop Steven. Others, he reports, privately agree, but are choosing to keep quiet. “I have become quite irritated over the years by bishops not saying anything on this question until they retire.”

It is a rare hint that he isn’t entirely saintly in thinking the best of people. Even when I later mention the long-running and bitter internal Church battle on his patch, extending from safeguarding, finance and governance to disputed allegations of sexual harassment that has been much reported between the Dean of Oxford’s Christ Church Cathedral, Martyn Percy, and the college and ecclesiastical authorities, he declines to say anything specific and tries instead to smooth troubled waters. “Anything that involves conflict and people falling out and getting hurt is damaging to the reputation of the Church, but we are a human organisation.”

His current stance on same-sex relationships will, however, bring him into conflict with the many (though he insists they are a minority) Anglicans who wholeheartedly disagree with him. Has he got a lot of flak for being so outspoken? Plenty have written, he reports (“most of them courteously”) to question the validity of his re-reading of scripture, and God-given rules, in order to fit changing circumstances in society.

“For me,” he explains, “it is about giving priority to all those strands in scripture about giving affirmation to each person’s individual love by God, how all are equal in God’s sight. And, therefore, all the texts in scriptures that appear to prohibit relationships outside marriage fall into a clearer perspective.”

As an argument, it is unlikely to convince his critics in the Church of England, and is moreover likely to antagonise further the divisions in the Anglican Communion with its 40 member churches globally and 85 million members. While individual “provinces”– notably the Episcopalians in the US – have already embraced same-sex marriage, many, especially in Africa, are resolutely opposed on scriptural grounds and are already threatening the survival of the communion.

“The majority [of member churches] do hold the traditional view of scripture. Culturally that is the only thing they can do, but if the Church of England can find a way to embody a diversity of views, then the Anglican Communion can do the same.”

Bishop Steven remains impressively hopeful in the face of the opposition he is facing. His mood is prompted, he says, by the many more positive communications he has been receiving since his booklet appeared. “I’ve had letters from people who have told me, ‘I am 60 and gay and at a stage in my life when I want to explore faith again, but I don’t feel I can do it in a church that isn’t able to affirm my identity and who I am’.”

And others from churchgoing parents of teenage children. “They are reflecting back to me their longing that their sons and daughters will grow up in the faith, but they understand that this is just not going to happen unless the Church can develop a way of affirming same-sex relationships”.

His task, now, he says, is to win round the objectors. “When you have made the journey yourself of coming to accept same-sex relationships, it is obvious and feels simple. But for people who have not made that journey for reasons of conscience and deep conviction, it doesn’t feel that simple.”

In his own backyard, the Oxford Diocesan Evangelical Fellowship has already publicly disowned his booklet. “We are grieved by this publication, believing that it departs from the clear teaching of the Bible in relation to sex and marriage,” it told the bishop in a statement.

If flying bishops are put in place over the issue, here is one congregation likely to flee into their arms. Wouldn’t that feel like failure as their local bishop? He smiles. He is not going there. Another dissenting voice close to home has been Canon Vaughan Roberts of St Ebbe’s in Oxford. Describing himself as a same-sex attracted Christian who holds to traditional teaching on marriage and sexuality, Canon Roberts accuses the bishop of being “close to accepting the assumption of many in our contemporary culture that normal people cannot live healthy, happy lives without sexual intimacy”.

Has he got a point? “Everyone isn’t going to change at once, and doesn’t need to change at once,” the bishop reiterates. Here he may be speaking again from personal experience. One of his two sons, Andy, is a senior pastor at the Evangelical Anglican Soul Survivor church in Watford (the other son is a computer games entrepreneur, one daughter is a GP, the other an environmental campaigner). Does he agree with his father’s proposal?

“I have four children,” Croft replies, his tone suddenly firm, “and I’ve certainly and quite naturally had conversations about this issue in my own family.”

Even the recent census findings don’t seem particularly to alarm him. “We’ve seen this trend over many years, but I think it is a significant milestone. We need to take note, but not be depressed and instead see it as a challenge.” Included in that will be the renewed calls for Disestablishment of the Church of England and the removal of Anglican bishops (him included) from the House of Lords prompted by the census figures. “That is not a decision that the Church itself can take,” he replies calmly. “It is for others.”

Perhaps the census findings on Christianity’s decline have come at a useful moment, as far as he is concerned. The minds of his fellow bishops will be focused as never before on much-needed reforms after too long brushing same-sex relationships under the carpet. It might allow the Church to be seen looking outwards to society rather than inwards.

“It is hard to assess if our current position on same-sex relationships is part of the reason for the fall in numbers,” he muses. “It is part of the challenge of communicating the faith. We have a great deal to do in telling the Christian story to those who didn’t grow up with it.”

Britain is no longer a post-Christian society, he suggests. The widespread ignorance of even the most basic details of the Bible, especially among the young, means it is possibly a “pre-Christian society”, in which context, he is heartened that his booklet has received an enthusiastic backing from younger people. “When I have visited schools or am around the [local] university in recent weeks, they have had extremely positive responses to what I have written.”

He is not, he insists (and despite the impression he gives), being naïve about the challenge that lies ahead in the next few months. “Churches are conservative organisations, but they do change slowly, gradually and with time.” He quotes the example of an earlier divisive row over the remarriage of divorcees in church. “I lived through that but it is fading now with such services much more normal. It is time to move forward on same-sex relationships in the same way. There is a lot of healing to be done.”