‘It’s Friday, it’s five o’clock… it’s Crackerjack!’ are words with which many generations of English children are familiar. Words which inevitably heralded the start of 30 minutes of comedy, confusion and games involving cabbages, which ended with the distribution of the much-prized propelling pencils.
There is a similar sense of inevitability, if not pleasure, about the Church of England’s calendar: it’s February, it’s General Synod… it’s time to talk about sexuality. Again.
Talking for decades
The Church of England has been talking about sexuality for decades. The Board of Social Responsibility published a report entitled ‘Homosexual Relations: A Contribution to Discussion’ back in 1979, and since then we’ve had at least four more reports and several debates on the floor of General Synod. The last report, known as the Pilling Report, was published in 2013 and it recommended a period of ‘facilitated conversations’.
‘Power is a powerful drug and the detox process is hard’
One of the most insightful speeches at the Church of England's General Synod in July came from The Revd Lindsay …