Dear Andrew,

Thanks for yours dated 27th February. I'm sorry for the delay in replying - partly because events have been moving so fast that it's been hard to find the right moment! Since your last letter we have had the General Synod debates on the private members motions regarding the listening process and civil partnerships; and, of course, the Episcopalian bishops have given their initial response to the Dar Es Salaam communiqué. We have also met and had an in depth conversation about these issues.

But I think it's more important to respond to your last letter, which was, in turn, responding to mine dated 25th February. In that letter I ask you the question "are you prepared to allow the potential for a diversity of views on this subject within the Anglican Communion.” I take your answer to be, with great sensitivity and tact, "no.” In that context you draw parallels with the process towards agreeing the possibility that women may be ordained which took place in 1968/72 following a twenty-year moratorium, and also with issues around lay presidency.

It is increasingly clear to me that the process which the Communion has followed over lesbian and gay Christians has been very seriously flawed. In the question over the ordination of women, twenty years led to a conditional acceptance, following a great deal of work by the Communion and a serious and sustained engagement with the question. In contrast, the initial Lambeth resolution in 1978 calling for sustained engagement over issues of homosexuality was honoured only in the breach - very little work was done to investigate the theology and scriptural basis for a more inclusive position. Twenty years later at Lambeth 98, the conclusions of the working party specifically charged with coming up with a response to these questions were hijacked by a few conservative bishops with the support of the then Archbishop of Canterbury , and a resolution was produced which actually rowed back from the 1978 position. In other words, the "conservative” position became a "regressive” position.

In this context, the frustration felt by the Episcopal Church and expressed by its Bishops last week is entirely understandable. To add weight to that frustration, the "listening process” which was called for by Lambeth 98 and followed up in the Windsor Report has patently not been carried out with any degree of seriousness by those people who have most to lose by genuine engagement - that is, those parts of TEC loosely grouped under the American Anglican Council, the Province of Nigeria and conservative groups in England. And the cross-border incursions condemned by Windsor have, far from coming to a halt, merely increased.

In the meantime, the Church of England has moved on. We were both present at General Synod on Feb 28th. I am aware that the final motions did not please either those of us who support an inclusive church or those who wish to turn back the clock. But it is very clear that the tone and substance of both debates reflected a desire by Synod to take a more mature and supportive approach to Christians who genuinely see the inclusion of lesbian and gay people as a Gospel imperative.

In the meantime, the Archbishop of Nigeria is proceeding helter skelter with his support for the homophobic legislation proposed in that country which breaches the UN Declaration on Human Rights.

All these things are of a piece, and in many ways they are comparable and have a continuity with your response to my question.

You say in your letter that you are awaiting a sustained response to the issues raised in 2003 in "True Union in the Body”. My answer to that is that the work has been done, over and over again, by a large number of theologians. The methods and conclusions may be different, but the existence of differing positions on these issues, carefully argued and theologically sustainable, can hardly be in doubt. I also came away from our discussion with a distinct impression that you still perceive gay and lesbian people as being in some way intrinsically different from heterosexual people - that difference being expressed through the emphasis in the four areas you mentioned it might be helpful to look at: "sexual desire, sexual behaviour, sexual identity and sexual relationships.”

I was, at the time, surprised that you saw the four areas needing clarification as being all to do with sex. I think I now understand why that is.

The literature and discussions by conservative Christians about lesbian and gay people seems to focus almost exclusively on sex. The word "love” is hardly ever heard, either in the work by the House of Bishops (for example, "Some Issues in Human Sexuality”) or by those who hold a more conservative position. I am reminded of the Roman Catholic position which, as you are aware, describes homosexuality (a word I no longer use) as an "intrinsic moral disorder.”

I think that is because, if you were to acknowledge the reality of the potential for love between two people of the same gender, you would have to acknowledge that lesbian and gay people are a legitimate part of God's creation. You would, in other words, have to realise that lesbian and gay people are equal before God, created as part of God's purpose and part of the astonishing and wonderful diversity of the world we inhabit. And then, the fear is, the whole carefully constructed house of cards would collapse. "Equality of souls before God” says Nietzsche. "Christian dynamite.” He's right. The really sad thing is that inclusive Christianity is about celebrating the radically welcoming gospel of Jesus Christ - but the opposition to inclusive Christianity has ended up undermining it.

I think too that conservative Christians have been part of a failure of compassion which will in years to come be seen as surprising as the support of the church for slavery before, eventually, Wilberforce convinced the bishops to change their minds.

Lesbian and gay people, from the earliest recognition that we may be destined to love people of our own gender, until very recently spent our entire formative years expecting to be rejected by God, our families, our friends and our communities. The welcome we find is, often, from those who understand us; and the society we live in is, therefore, often a society defined by sex. True. But this, as a function of the discrimination we have experienced, is entirely unremarkable; and as the differences between lesbian and gay people and the rest of society are reduced, I am sure that the emphasis on sexual expression will also reduce.

In this context I came across another quote the other day, which I haven't been able to source: "The Bible contains 6 admonitions to homosexuals and 362 admonitions to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision.” (Lynn Lavner)

That's why the opposition of some of the Bishops and others to the SORP regulations was so wrong; because by opposing them they were supporting the continued marginalisation of lesbian and gay people in the name of a particular version of religious faith which is neither universal nor, in the end, justifiable.

The apparent inability of conservatives to recognise the reality of God's love in lesbian and gay relationships has, at heart, undermined the whole process in which the Anglican Communion is involved. The "listening process”, such as it is, has been approached from a position which a priori denies the possibility of the full inclusion of all in God's realm. Is it any wonder that the process has, through no fault of the Anglican Communion Office, failed? Similarly the genesis and manifestation of Lambeth 1.10 as a means to resist inclusive theology has undermined the nature and status of the Lambeth Conference, and by extension the role of Primates and Bishops within the Communion.

It's a fine mess we're in. To some extent, that may be considered a success by those, mainly in America, who have seen this issue as the one on which they could reclaim Anglicanism for a version of Christianity closer to Puritanism than anything else. But I think you and I would be united in thinking how sad it is that we have come to this.

We are all responsible. But in the end, those who consistently refuse to recognise God's love at work in this diverse world must bear the major burden of responsibility.

It is difficult for me to see where our correspondence might go. I entered it in the hope that we would be able to recognise and understand more fully each others' positions and, perhaps, find common ground. I am glad that in many ways we have found common ground and I am glad that we have got to know one another a little.

But on the issue in question, our correspondence has led me to a recognition that the misunderstanding of the nature and being of lesbian and gay people is so profound that I am not clear how we can, usefully, continue to discuss it. I'm left not with the Bible but with another speech - from the Merchant of Venice - which has been running through my head while I've been thinking about how to respond to your last letter:

"I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?”

Yours in Christ

Giles